Almost 30 years ago, local historian Dewey Livingston, then a historical technician for the Point Reyes National Seashore, defined the boundaries of an area within the park that he thought might be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places due to its significance in the evolution of the California dairy industry.
The park’s ultimate determination that the district, which encompasses the historic ranches on Point Reyes, was indeed eligible for the register—an official list managed by the park service—was affirmed by the California State Historic Preservation Office in the early ’90s.
Now, decades later, it appears that that area, as well as a second area that encompasses the ranches in the Olema Valley, will be formally listed. The timing is notable. The districts overlap with the area under consideration in the park’s general management plan amendment process, which zeros in on ranching operations and could result in drastic changes in management, including eliminating or reducing the number of historic ranches.
Yet the park service has been preserving the areas under the guidelines of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act since the time they were deemed eligible, and, more importantly, a listing does not affect which contemporary uses the park decides are appropriate.
“The nominations for the historic register are about the properties, but what kind of use we determine is appropriate is a modern-day decision. That’s what this [amendment] planning process is all about,” park spokeswoman Melanie Gunn said. According to her, the formal listings could come in February or March.
Even though a listing would not prevent the park from eliminating historic uses within the districts, Mr. Livingston said he is happy to see the process moving forward.
“A listing shows that the park has an obligation to take care of the resource,” said Mr. Livingston, who now works as an independent historian and is in the midst of writing a comprehensive history of the Point Reyes Peninsula and Tomales Bay watershed.
He went on: “Where the national register has power is in the way it shapes the public perception. That’s where the potential teeth are: in the power of public argument if the park service is going to do some action that affects the historic integrity.”
The National Historic Preservation Act required federal agencies to take into account the effects of their undertakings on historic properties. It also established an independent advisory council responsible for enforcing the act. That council is allowed “a reasonable opportunity to comment” on new projects, which must also “involve the public and identify potential consulting parties,” the act states.
The historic districts
The two districts eligible for listing are dubbed the “Point Reyes Peninsula Dairy Ranches,” an area of over 22,000 acres that encompasses 17 of the working ranches in the seashore’s boundaries, and the “Olema Valley Dairy Ranches,” which includes 19 of the working ranches from Point Reyes Station to Bolinas and covers more than 14,000 acres.
A banner that hung during a scoping meeting for the general management plan amendment last fall said the ranches in these areas represented the evolution in dairying from original wood-frame milking barns to the concrete Grade A sanitary barns of the 1940s.
The areas are categorized as “rural historic districts,” defined as “a geographical area that historically has been used by people, or shaped or modified by human activity, occupancy, or intervention, and that possesses a significant concentration, linkage, or continuity of areas of land use, vegetation, buildings and structures, roads and waterways, and natural features,” according to the park service’s website.
The period of significance for both districts is between 1856 and 1958.
Following the state historic preservation officer’s approval of the park’s nomination of the districts, the park service’s federal preservation officer began a review of the properties. Following this, the nominations will be forwarded to the keeper of the National Register of Historic Places for formal lising.
The historians are evaluating the districts based on the evidence of human use or activity in 11 landscape characteristics. These include land uses and activities, patterns of spatial organization, response to the natural environment, cultural traditions, circulation networks, boundary demarcations, vegetation related to land use, buildings, structures, and objects, clusters, archeological sites and small-scale elements.
Paul Lusignan, a historian for the register, explained. “We look at the character-defining features for a given landscape with integrity from a certain time period,” he said. “For a ranch, these features might include the arrangement of the buildings, where the yard and the home is, where the cattle are permitted to graze, where they’re rounded up, placement of fence lines and cattle trails and even the length of the grass—short or wild.”
Mr. Lusignan said that although the listing of a district defines the ecological and cultural characteristics of a property down to these details, once a district is listed in the register, the land management agency—in this case, the park—is not obligated to preserve the area exactly as it is.
For instance, if a ranching family on Point Reyes were forced to move out of its home, the park could preserve the integrity of the historic structure but repurpose its use for, say, a visitor center. If cattle were taken off historically grazed land, the park could maintain the grasslands with mowers.
And, Mr. Lusignan said, “we reserve the right to remove a listing from the register if there are significant changes and alterations. For instance, if they decide to tear down buildings or obliterate grazing lands, resulting in drastic changes to the landscape.”
With luck, he added, historic preservation and the park’s selection of a new management strategy will not be at odds in Point Reyes.
“Sometimes we see conflicting interests, such as with coal mining and historic preservation—should we protect the practice of coal but rip all the land in the process? It’s the land-management agency’s job to come up with a way to juggle all these competing factors,” Mr. Lusignan said.
Gordon White, the seashore’s chief of integrated resource management, said the listing will not impact current management. “A listing doesn’t change too much, since we’ve already been treating these buildings as historic. It just formalizes a management scheme that we’ve been doing for over 20 years,” he said.
The park follows standards defined by the Secretary of the Interior in the 1995 “Treatment of Historic Properties,” which includes guidelines for preservation, rehabilitation, restoration and reconstruction for both eligible properties and those listed in the register.
Managed under the same principals, there are 12 areas of historic significance identified as “cultural landscapes,” including the eligible ranching districts. According to the park’s website, these are defined as “historically significant places that show evidence of human interaction with the physical environment. Their authenticity is measured by historical integrity, or the presence and condition of physical characteristics that remain from the historic period.”
The seashore’s cultural landscapes include the Marconi/RCA Bolinas Transmitting Station and RCA Point Reyes Receiving Station Historic Districts. The Olema lime kilns and the Point Reyes Lifesaving Station are recognized as landmarks, another type of historic place included in the register.
Mr. Livingston said the movement to recognize and preserve cultural landscapes took off in the park service in the ’80s. “During that time, Point Reyes got a lot of attention around the country for its cultural landscape characteristics, as being an excellent example of a historic working landscape,” he said. “It was always seen as a really intact laboratory for studying historic landscapes—one that continues today.”