National Parks Traveler Podcast Episode 354 | Historic Preservation in the Parks

A century of seasons has worn the appearance of the log cabin Roy Fure built in present-day Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, but his care of the small cabin, and later National Park Service restoration efforts, have enabled it to stand the test of time.

Dovetail-notched spruce logs still sit tightly together, the corrugated metal roof Fure replaced his sod roof with in 1930 and painted red could use a new coat of paint, but otherwise looks rainproof, and the windmill he erected to generate electricity still stands tall.

Across the 85+ million-acre National Park System there are tens of thousands of historic structures — 19th-century homesteads, Civil War structures, Civil Rights facilities, presidential homes, artworks and more — but not all receive the same treatment as Fure's cabin.

• At  Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve in Oregon, the historic, and once charming, Chateau with 23 rooms has been closed since 2018 due to structural issues and a lack of funding to address them. 
• In Kansas, the Park Service last year gained title to the First Baptist Church at Nicodemus National Historic Site, but a lack of funding has left the 118-year-old house of worship boarded up. 
• At Gettysburg National Military Park the David Wills house, where President Lincoln spent the night before delivering his address, has been closed since fall 2024 when a water line burst and flooded the structure.

Those are just a very small handful of historic structures in the National Park System that are among thousands competing for scarce rehabilitation dollars.

To discuss the situation across the park system we’ve invited Pam Bowman, the senior director of government relations at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.