By DHR Staff

This year, we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation and the seminal contributions made by Virginians to establish the first modern democracy. But did you know that we’re also celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Virginia Landmarks Commission and its successor, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR)? DHR’s mission is to foster, encourage, and support the stewardship of Virginia’s rich and diverse historic resources from the 250 years of our nation and over 16,000 years of history and pre-history before that.

As we continue to celebrate National Historic Preservation Month—a time to recognize the importance of the historic preservation movement and its role to promote an understanding of history and the importance of historic places—we can’t help but reflect on how instrumental Virginians were in establishing the preservation ethic that became a national movement.

One of the earliest state historical societies, the Virginia Historical Society (now known as the Virginia Museum of History and Culture) was formed in the Commonwealth in 1831. One of the earliest statewide private preservation organizations in the United States, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now known as Preservation Virginia), was established in Virginia in 1889. The nation’s first historical highway marker program was founded also in Virginia in 1927. In 1966, this spirit also propelled the creation of the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission, predecessor of today’s DHR, the Virginia Landmarks Register, and the Commonwealth’s historic preservation easement program.

Since 1966, property owners, local groups, and jurisdictions have partnered with DHR to list more than 3,100 individual sites and nearly 600 districts in the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places. In recent decades, DHR has led initiatives to list sites associated with the history of Virginia Indians, African Americans, women, and other groups, in efforts to highlight the significant contributions these populations have made to the complex history of the Commonwealth and the nation.

To date, more than 290,000 historic resources in the Commonwealth, including buildings, archaeological sites, and districts, have been identified and recorded in DHR’s digital Virginia Cultural Resources Information System (VCRIS). Since DHR’s inception, Virginia property owners have granted to the Commonwealth more than 711 historic preservation easements, conserving more than 47,000 acres in Virginia. These easements protect countless historic houses, buildings, archaeological sites, and battlefields. Over the course of close to a century—since DHR’s historical highway marker program was created in 1927—the Commonwealth has erected 2,500 historical highway markers that highlight people, places, and events important at the regional, state, or national level. Working diligently with federal and state agencies, local jurisdictions, and other consulting parties under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, DHR has also been integral in avoiding, minimizing, or mitigating adverse impacts to important archaeological sites, as well as historic buildings and districts during the implementation of more than 100,000 federally funded projects in Virginia.

Interest in the Commonwealth’s archaeology has resulted in DHR’s unique Threatened Sites program; an innovative certification program to train avocational archaeologists; and annual and semi-annual field schools co-sponsored by the Department, the Archaeological Society of Virginia, and Council of Virginia Archaeologists that attract dozens of volunteers every year. These initiatives facilitate, in a race against time, investigations along Virginia’s extensive shorelines, where sea level rise is destroying prehistoric and Contact- and Colonia-era archaeology.

As we reflect on DHR’s history on its 60th birthday, we can’t help but take pride in DHR’s Archaeological Collections of more than seven million artifacts and the DHR Conservation Lab. And we’d be remiss not to add that DHR’s historic rehabilitation tax credit program has leveraged more than $7.6 billion in private investment in the rehabilitation of over 3,600 historic buildings, which has supported tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in rehabilitation and post-rehabilitation spending across the state’s economy.

Historic preservation is relevant for Virginians of all ages, all walks of life, and all ethnic backgrounds. Needless to say, we believe it is important to remember Virginia’s history and its impact on our lives and our communities. In that spirit, on National Preservation Month, we’d like to raise a toast to DHR and all of its staff, volunteers, and alumni. Here’s to 60 and many more decades of preserving—and making—history!