My preservation Experience

One of the most memorable preserved places I can recall was visiting the Grand Canyon when I was 16. It was amazing to go and visit a place so immense and beautiful. To this day I can still recall looking out at the canyon and it feeling like it was a painting that I could just reach out and touch, the whole experience seemed so surreal. To everyone who has never been I would strongly encourage to make a trip and visit the Grand Canyon at least once in your life. Pictures and videos may show the majesty of this place, but to experience it first had is un-replicable.
With that feeling in mind I know exactly why such organizations like the National Trust for historic Preservation were formed.
In a time and world where men ruled it appears that women played a very important and critical role, in developing what a historical preservation group does today. While men worked on and struggled to preserve artifacts and buildings in their home towns using expenses and political pull of their own it was a woman named Ann Pamela Cunningham who changed the way preservation works. By creating a group called the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, Miss Cunningham worked with her team to canvass the country in search of donations to preserve President George Washington's Mt. Vernon home, and "they accepted no answer but yes."
Preservation when first started in America was strictly patriotic, any building or land that was related to the Independence of our nation was sought after as a historical site. On October 17th, 1949, the bill for the creation of the National Trust for Historic Preservation was passed. By the late 1970's it was discussed that the Trust needed a defined mission; that being: Fostering preservation of the nation's diverse architectural and cultural heritage for all Americans.