01/11/2017
NPS Park Cultural Landscapes Program
Inspire Preservation: Daniel Weldon
The summer of 2014, I accepted a NCPE internship with the Midwest Regional Office of the National Park Service and changed my perspective on cultural landscapes. Fresh out of grad school at the University of Georgia, I thought let’s try Omaha. Until that time, all of my landscape preservation practice involved either Deep South designed and agricultural landscapes, or historic Mid Atlantic tobacco plantations. That summer I was fortunate to work with Julie McGilvary on a project to document the historic road network of Badlands National Park.
The scale and scope was so much bigger than what I was accustomed to tackling. The park is a mixture of sweeping natural beauty formed over millennia and layers of more recent human settlement. The common narrative or thread physically running through the cultural landscape is an extensive road network linked to the central tour road. Over the course of one week, we documented overlooks, road traces, Mission 66-era visitor infrastructure, and historic motor courts in the park, features that impact the way you the viewer moves through the landscape. I left the project reevaluating the importance of circulation systems and the stories these features can tell about land use.
Discover Badlands National Park: https://www.nps.gov/badl/index.htm
Want to know more about cultural landscape preservation? http://go.nps.gov/a5lbkj
#NPSCareers #CulturalLandscapes #Preservation
