National Council on Public History

When I first read through our starting questions and started thinking about what to write for this case statement, I initially had trouble conceptualizing and defining “public lands history.” Is it history written about the management of public lands? History written for public land agencies to then interpret to the public? Or is it the public outreach and interpretation itself? Revisiting Imperiled Promise reminded me that I’m not the only one struggling with this concept.

I have decided to use my case statement to try to categorize different kinds of history that gets written related to public lands, based on my own experiences and through the lens of the work that I’ve done. Because my experience is primarily with the National Park Service (NPS), I focus mostly on that agency. The below statement is split into (1) my own background, so a reader can understand where I’m coming from, (2) some suggested categories for thinking about public lands history, (3) an example of a project I’m currently working on that could be a good example to consider during our discussions, and (4) issues, concerns, and thoughts about how history work occurs in the NPS.

1. Background

I have a PhD in environmental history. I worked for the National Park Service as a seasonal interpretive ranger for many years, and my dissertation was on the Department of the Interior initiative to create coastal parks, which came to fruition mostly in the 1960s and 1970s. I have also worked for several environmental policy organizations. In 2016, I took a job with Historical Research Associates, Inc. (HRA), an historical research consulting firm that does a lot of historical research and writing for public land management agencies, including the National Park Service, US Forest Service, and Army Corps of Engineers (in addition to other litigation-related historical research and cultural resource management work). My NPS experience led by supervisors to put me on NPS projects right after I got started, which eventually led to winning more NPS work. By the time I left HRA in 2023, I had been the primary author of six book-length reports for the NPS, in addition having done work on interpretive and oral history projects for a variety of clients. In 2024, I started my own company, Mirandola Research, LLC. I am currently working on three different projects for the NPS, two of which are in partnership with other historians.

Here are some examples of the work I have done for or about the NPS:

Shifting Sands: Point Reyes National Seashore Administrative History Update, 2001–2022 (secondary author; primary author is Paul Sadin). U.S. National Park Service. 2024.

“The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.” In National Parks, Native Sovereignty: Experiments in Collaboration. Eds. Christina Gish Hill, Matthew J. Hill And Brooke Neely. Norman. OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2024.

Advancing African American Scholarship: A Report for the US National Park Service Interior Region 2 (Legacy Southeast Region). U.S. National Park Service. 2023.

First Year in Oregon, 1840-1869: A Narrative History. U.S. National Park Service. 2021.

Overlanders in the Columbia River Gorge, 1840–1870. U.S. National Park Service. 2020.

A Small Cave No More: An Administrative History of Jewel Cave National Monument. National Park Service. 2020.

Keepers of the Story, Stewards of the Trail: An Administrative History of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. Written for the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, 2019.

Commemoration and Collaboration: An Administrative History of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail (with Emily Greenwald), U.S. National Park Service, 2018.

“The National Park Service Goes to the Beach,” Forest History Today 23, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 19–27.

“Interpreting climate change through human stories at coastal national park sites,” History@Work, National Council on Public History, January 2, 2017.

“Leaving with a Kind Heart: Helping Children and Adults with Difficult Topics,” Ranger: The Journal of the Association of National Park Rangers, 32, 4 (Fall 2016): 14-15.

“Coastal Parks For a Metropolitan Nation: How Postwar Politics and Urban Growth Shaped America’s Shores.” PhD diss. University at Albany, SUNY. 2015.

2. Suggested Categories

Re-visiting Imperiled Promise through the lens of my recent work led me to three primary categories that historical research occurs within the National Park Service. These categories can overlap, of course. But I think they could be helpful just in framing our conservation (or maybe not!):

1. Historical research with the primary goal of compliance or preserving the built environment (usually with Section 106 or 110 of the National Historic Preservation Act)
   1. National Register of Historic Places, National Landmarks Program
2. Historical research with the primary goal of informing interpretation and outreach
   1. Examples: Historic Resource Study, Administrative History, writing interpretive content
3. Historical research with the primary goal of informing management of public lands
   1. Example: Cultural Landscape Report, Historic Structure Report, legislative histories

3. Example

I am currently working on a Black History Research Needs report for the NPS Intermountain Region. This project is based loosely on a similar report that I project managed while still at HRA for the Southeast Region (completed in 2023). Both of these projects are being conducted by a team of historians who, all together, bring expertise in Black history and the history of the NPS.

These projects are organized in a somewhat novel way, with historic contexts that will inform interpretation and recommendations that inform management with the goal of projects in the report eventually being conducted to later inform interpretation. The goal is for trained historians to evaluate and identify knowledge gaps and create a blueprint for how the NPS could fund projects that then fill those gaps. Each project is organized into the below deliverables:

Research:

• Thorough review of NPS historical reports and web content with analysis of how this content engages with Black history
• Thorough review of secondary literature related to Black history in the region
• Survey of NPS staff, park partners, descendent communities, public historians, academic historians, and anyone else with relevant knowledge, regarding the state of understanding and interpretation of stories related to Black history and where there is room for improvement.
  • The survey for the Intermountain Region project is still open and welcoming responses.

Deliverables:

• Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography on Black history in the region
• Series of Historic Contexts, organized by theme that address the major trends in scholarship related to Black history in the region.
  • The idea behind these contexts is that someone who does not know much about Black history in the region (whether a new park employee or a member of the public) could pick these short contexts up and it would give them a general understanding of Black history in the region as a starting point.
• Research Guide for conducting research on Black history in the region
  • For interpreters who are not trained in history but would like to research Black history at their park.
• Needs report: report that summarizes the team’s analysis of existing studies and makes recommendations for future avenues of research.
  • The primary audience for this report is park and regional managers, so they can build future funding requests
  • There will be specific project recommendations for each park, in addition to several regional, subregional, and thematic research project ideas.
  • It will include ideas for partnering with organizations and scholars to help facilitate this research and make it as effective as possible.
• Presentation to NPS leadership, staff, and partners
  • To transfer knowledge to NPS staff, to ensure the report gets utilized and its recommendations are implemented.

Because this project is ongoing, I would love to spend some time discussing in this working group how this project can be most impactful for the region, and what partnerships, recommendations, expertise, and follow-through might help with that.

4. Issues and Discussion Starting Points 

• How to better translate historical research into interpretation? The NPS contracts out Special History Studies that transcend units—a way to tell stories that connect different places and look beyond arbitrary boundaries of public lands, something suggested in Imperiled Promise. These could and should be a great resource to interpreters, but it seems they sometimes aren’t as referenced as say, a park’s Historic Resource Study, which might be out of date but is specific to the park and so is easier for interpretive managers to point their staff to. How do we get the most recent and up-to-date historical products in the hands of interpreters, and how do we ensure they have a chance to digest them? What’s the balance between a well-researched and complex narrative and something that’s easy to read during the short week of training that most seasonal interpreters have before they start giving tours?
• Interpreters are often the ones doing historical research for their site on a day-to-day basis, even if they aren’t trained in history. In our Black History Needs Report for the NPS Southeast Region, we included a section “Research Tools for Interpreters” and “Best Practices for Historical Research” to help point interpreters in the right direction.
  • Related point: A good interpretive program or initiative is often the work of an individual or team with a particular interest in telling history in a more nuanced way. If that person leaves, the initiative often flounders in their wake.
• Making sure there are interpretive and cultural resources staff on the project team for historical studies. Often the NPS point person for the project is an historian, which makes sense, but there’s no representation from interpretation.
• I think it could be helpful to have both interpretive and cultural resource staff on the project team for any history project that is contracted out. The projects I have worked on where they have both interpretive and cultural resources staff, as well as park-specific staff (if a regional project), seem to be more set up for success in terms of being recommendations that will make a difference in the eventual interpretation. When I write a report and I have not talked to any interpreters, I am never sure if the way that I’m organizing the final deliverable is going to be useful to the interpreters or not.
• Imperiled Promise notes that the NPS should do a better job incorporating its own history in the history it interprets to the public. Most NPS contracts now include a “transfer of knowledge” component to help get the information in the historical report out to interpreters and the public. This can range from writing a few articles for web content to giving a webinar about the project. We could do a better job at making sure the TOK component helps to transfer knowledge to interpreters specifically to help with the history/interpretation information gap.
• When research is conducted by historians, it’s often by contractors, and the historians employed by the NPS are managing the contract, not writing the history. If the contracted historian’s work entails significant outreach via oral histories or other partnership-based work, those relationships are with the contractor and not NPS staff. When the contractor finishes the project, the relationship does not continue. Even if the relationship is with the NPS, the method of staffing parks in a way where employees are incentivized and encourage to move between parks to advance their careers, building long-term, trusting relationships with local stakeholders and descendent communities, who are critical to doing public-facing historical research well, becomes difficult.
• Has there been a shift away from academically affiliated historians conducting contract work and more private companies or independent historians doing the work? Not sure if this is just my own perception or the reality of things.
• For the NPS to stop holding the microphone and make room for other voices, rather than dominating the narrative, there needs to be full institutional support – interpretation, cultural resources, natural resources all need to be on board. This is a change that is often leader-driven and even good examples of this, like the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial (which Imperiled Promise references as a good example) often end when the leader moves on.
• What can partnership-based parks like National Heritage Areas—public lands that contain no public lands in the area’s own name—teach us about historical research, community partnerships, and stakeholder buy-in on public lands that are not public? (I am currently working on a legislative history of NHAs and have been thinking a lot about this).

Discussion