May is National Preservation Month. I have always enjoyed working with historic properties, especially the lesser known “treasures” you often find tucked away in small towns and communities. It seems every historic property comes with a story, and even a surprise or two.

I once developed an HAER (Historic American Engineering Record) report on the Ship Shoal Lighthouse off the coast of Louisiana; built in 1858. I had a wonderful adventure riding out to the lighthouse with the Coast Guard. Later, when I researched the structure at the National Archives, I carefully spread out the original construction drawings to photograph them. I was amazed to find that on the back of one of the drawings was a map of an island owned by my sister-in-law’s family—in Lake Champlain, Vermont! They were really conserving paper back then! It was a wonderful coincidence.

The HAER, along with the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), and the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), are all part of the Heritage Documentation Programs housed at the Library of Congress. These collections reflect a range of building types and engineering technologies, and have been administered since 1933 through a partnership with the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the private sector.

To date, nearly 40,000 historic sites and structures have been documented—truly a collection of American treasures!