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This website is a collection of the DRAFT data collected for the 2011 nomination of 6 high potential route segments of the Old Spanish National Historical Trail in a contract administered by the Old Spanish Trail Association on behalf of the NPS, BLM, and USFS. SHPOs and THPOs in 6 states, as well as over 100 volunteers and stakeholders participated in this project, which included historical, ethnographic, geographic, and field research conducted by Mark Henderson and Rachel Preston Prinz. The drafts were written by Mark Henderson and edited by Rachel Prinz. This data will be submitted to the National Register once OSTA's consultant (not us) completes the MPDF. We are providing this data as a service to the OSTA membership, to the various stakeholders, and on behalf of the American people... to whom this amazing trail belongs.
Please fell free to contact us, and/or use these documents in your own research, with appropriate citation.

Definitions


Important definitions you may need to properly understand what your federal representative needs from you...


Character-defining feature: a prominent or distinctive aspect, quality, or characteristic of a historic property that contributes significantly to its physical character. Structures, objects, vegetation, spatial relationships, views, furnishings, decorative details, and materials may be such features.

Cultural landscape: a geographic area, including both cultural and natural resources and the wildlife or domestic animals therein, associated with a historic event, activity, or person or exhibiting other cultural or aesthetic values. There are four general kinds of cultural landscape, not mutually exclusive.
Ethnographic landscape: areas containing a variety of natural and cultural resources that associated people define as heritage resources, including plant and animal communities, geographic features, and structures, each with their own special local names.
Historic designed landscape: a landscape significant as a design or work of art; was consciously designed and laid out either by a professional or amateur according to a recognized style or tradition; has a historical association with a significant person, trend or movement in landscape gardening or architecture, or a significant relationship to the theory or practice of landscape architecture.
Historic vernacular landscape: a landscape whose use, construction, or physical layout reflects common traditions, customs, beliefs, or values, which over time is manifested in physical features and materials and their interrelationships, and which reflect the customs and everyday lives of people.
Historic landscape: a cultural landscape associated with events, persons, design styles, or ways of life that are significant in American history, landscape architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture; a landscape listed in or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

Integrity: the authenticity of a property's historic identity, evidenced by the survival of physical characteristics that existed during its historic or prehistoric period; the extent to which a property retains its historic appearance.

Property type: a grouping of individual properties based on a set of shared physical or associative characteristics.

Reconnaissance study: a synthesis of cultural resource information describing the kinds of cultural resources in a study area and summarizing their significance; sometimes called a cultural resource overview.

Section l06, or "l06": refers to Section l06 of the National Historic Preservation Act of l966, which requires federal agencies to take into account the effects of their proposed activities on properties included, or eligible for inclusion, in the National Register of Historic Places.

Setting: the physical environment of a historic property; the character of the place in which the property played its historical role.

Sketch plan: a plan, generally not to exact scale although often drawn from measurements, where the features of a structure or landscape are shown in proper relation and proportion to one another.