NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK

10/17/2012

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced the designation of new National Historic Landmarks in sixteen different states, including a site associated with the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II as well as the site of a government-sponsored “greenbelt” community built during the Great Depression.

AMERICA’S GREAT OUTDOORS: Secretary Salazar Designates Twenty New National Historic Landmarks

“Each of these landmarks teaches us about the history of our land, our people, and our nation, from archeological sites dating back more than two millennia to a mid-twentieth century building,” Salazar said. “By designating these sites as National Historic Landmarks, we help meet a major goal of President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative to reconnect people, especially young people, to our nation’s historic, cultural, and natural heritage.”

 “These new listings will join approximately 2,500 other sites in the National Historic Landmark Program,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. “These places showcase our rich and complex history – from prehistoric time right up to the modern era.”

The new National Historic Landmarks include the following site:

    The Poston Elementary School, Unit 1, Colorado River Relocation Center, La Paz County, Arizona was the second of ten relocation centers established for the confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II.  Poston is the only relocation center that retains an above-ground complex of elementary school buildings. 

The program, established in 1935, is administered by the National Park Service on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior. The agency works with preservation officials and other partners interested in nominating a landmark. Completed applications are reviewed by the National Park System Advisory Board, which makes recommendations for designation to the Secretary of the Interior.

 If selected, property ownership remains intact but each site receives a designation letter, a plaque, and technical preservation advice.

 Additional information on the designations can be found at www.nps.gov/nhl.

Sources: News Release from the Office of the Secretary U.S. Department of the Interior
http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Interior-Designates-27-New-National-Landmarks.cfm

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 Two more Az sites win historic landmark status

Oct 19, 2012

Cale Ottens Cronkite News Service

 

      The Department of the Interior has declared two Arizona sites national historic landmarks – one from the state's prehistory and the other from a darker time in modern history.
      Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday gave the designation to a World War II-era Japanese-American internment camp near Parker and to one of the earliest human settlement sites in the Americas, near present-day Sierra Vista.
      The Poston Elementary School Unit 1 site in La Paz County and the Murray Springs Clovis Site in Cochise County were among 26 national historic landmarks named Wednesday.
     The Poston site was known as the Colorado River Relocation Center in World War II, when it was an internment camp for thousands of Japanese Americans who were forced from their homes on the West Coast and relocated by the federal government during the war. It was the second of 10 such camps in the country and, for several years, the largest.
      The relocation programs were carried out in the name of national security in the months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Documents nominating the site for historic designation note that such camps are significant because they "reflected wartime hysteria, racist sentiment and the military's professed inability to gauge the loyalty of Japanese Americans to the United States."
      "The lives of Japanese Americans at the center and the impact of the OIA (Office of Indian Affairs, which ran the Poston site) plans on the people and the site are represented by the remaining historic resources," the nominating document said.
      There were originally three Poston camps, but only one remains.
      The La Paz County camp is the only relocation center that still has an above ground complex of elementary school buildings from the war years, which were built with adobe bricks manufactured on site by the citizens who were held there. The land is on the Colorado River Indian reservation in western Arizona. 
  
Source:  http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/101912_historic_landmarks/two-more-