Preserving cultural landscapes is a relatively new preservation concept. Cultural landscapes are manmade environments that demonstrate a history of use, and include earthworks and structures that evidence this past. Cultural landscapes differ from conventional preservation districts in that historic buildings are only one of a set of resources within the boundaries of significance. Cultural landscape preservation is a melding of archaeology, conventional fieldwork, vernacular architectural history, and environmental history.

The Value of Historic Landscapes

Conceiving a landscape as historic or meaningful, in the same way that an individual building or district is significant, is not especially difficult. Anyone who has driven or walked through a historic farm complex with its surrounding fields and hedgerows, or walked through the remains of an abandoned coal mining town, can understand that the value of the whole is certainly greater than any individual element. The problem lies in balancing development pressures, highest and best use, and property rights while at the same time identifying and protecting the most significant landscapes and their cultural artifacts. A cultural landscape is defined as "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." The National Parks Service acknowledges four general types of cultural landscapes, none of which are mutually exclusive. These include historic sites, historic designed landscapes, historic vernacular landscapes, and ethnographic landscapes. Examples in the Seattle area include Volunteer Park and its adjacent cemetery, the Arboretum, the Route 2 from I-5 toward the North Cascades, Chuckanut Drive near Bellingham, Gas Works Park, and the remains of historic Newcastle, located south of Bellevue. The National Park Service developed a "Preservation Brief" on cultural landscapes in 1992. Official acknowledgement of the value of cultural landscapes, and their role in reflecting our country's development and relationship with the natural environment, has directly coincided with growing concern about sprawl. As national trends toward urban renewal, and the resulting demolition of urban landmarks sparked the preservation movement and federal policies governing historic structures, so do continuing development trends influence the emergence of new issues and policies. Current programs such as Barn Again!, a nationwide initiative to save rural barns, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation's public, decade-long fight against sprawl, are other examples of the importance of preserving landscape within the evolving preservation ethic.

Documenting Cultural Landscapes

Tools used by investigators researching the history of landscapes can be valuable to more conventional historians. One of the primary differences between cultural landscape research and conventional architectural history research is the extensive use of maps, surveys, and aerial photographs. Understanding the relationship between historic development and the composition of soils through soil maps and geological surveys is a compelling way to interpret history. Rural development patterns, overlain on these kinds of geological datasets, directly demonstrate the connection between nature and culture.

Aerial photographs, especially a series taken over time, are an invaluable tool for landscape and community historians. The University of Washington's Map Room has a number of aerial photographs and other graphic resources helpful to historians.

Our area is also lucky to have a comprehensive, Depression Era, photographic survey within the regional branch of the Washington State Archives. These are organized by plat number, which is a spatial system, so that researchers looking through a single file group can understand patterns of vernacular architectural styles, and groupings, with very little effort.

Cultural Landscapes as Planning and Design Tools

Given the Pacific Northwest's love of the outdoors, it is not surprising that this area is home to one of the more successful cultural landscape preservation projects in the country. The Mountains to Sound Greenway, which extends over 100 miles across the Cascades on I-90 to Seattle's downtown waterfront, came into being thanks to the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust. Since the summer of 1990, they worked hard to advocate for and protect a conservation network along this corridor. This overlay preserves green spaces around Seattle and surrounding rural communities. The greenway includes an extensive trail network, working farms and forests, and provides opportunities to experience nature and history.

Three primary interpretative landmarks, the Mercer Slough Nature Park, Snoqualmie Point, and the Cedar River Watershed Educational Center, tie the lengthy corridor together. Rene Senos, an associate for Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects, and the firm's liaison to the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, is an enthusiastic supporter of the program. She notes that the interpretative centers are "distinct places with their own unique cultural and ecological character … they breathe life into the Greenway concept. Children, families, and individuals can literally see, touch, and experience the landscape in profound and meaningful ways. Whether peering through a microscope at Mercer Slough organisms, surveying the dramatic panoramic view of the Cascade Mountains from Snoqualmie Point, or discovering the remarkable journey of a raindrop at Cedar River Watershed, visitors are encouraged to perceive the natural environment and their relationship to it with new eyes."

The story of this region is well told in its landscape, and the systems that operate within it. Seeing and understanding this history through the landscape coincides well with this region's longstanding enthusiasm for, and connection to our natural environment.

View last month's Preservation & Environment article

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