Historical inventory...


RESOURCES

Since its inception in the early 1970s, the NWIC has been a fundamental source of archaeological information. In 1993, the NWIC acquired built environment information which was previously maintained only at OHP. The NWIC now maintains the most extensive historical resources information base available for Northwest California.

Archaeology

  • Reference library
  • Over 36,000 records of prehistoric and historic-period archaeological resources
  • More than 37,504 historic resource studies, with an average of 1,600 new reports and records received each year
  • 5 GIS searchable counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Solano, Marin, San Francisco
  • Database searchable Study Reports and Resource Site Records
  • Hundreds of USGS topographic maps, plotted with archaeological site and study locations
  • Publications in archaeology
  • Publications in Ethnography

Built Enviornment

  • Reference library consisting of publications in archaeology, ethnography, history, and early atlases
  • 25,000 historic resources buillding records
  • National Register Nomination records
  • California Registered Historical Landmarks records
  • Points of Historical Interest records
  • Historic maps (Sanborn and others)
  • Post Office Department records
  • General Land Office survey and Rancho Plats
  • Bureau of Land Management mineral and mining survey plats
  • Local Histories
  • Periodicals

HISTORICAL

Historical resources is a term which encompasses prehistoric/historic archaeological sites and the built environment. The resources encompass historic sites, buildings, structures, objects, districts, and landscapes

Definition of Terms

Site:
Location of a significant event, a prehistoric or historic occupation or activity, or a building or structure, whether standing, ruined, or vanished, where the location itself possesses historic, cultural, or archaeological value regardless of the value of any existing structure.

Building:
Those constructions created principally to shelter any form of human activity, or a historically and functionally related unit.

Structure:
Those functional constructions made usually for purposes other than creating human shelter.

Object:
Those constructions that are primarily artistic in nature or are relatively small in scale and simply constructed. Although it may be, by nature or design, movable, an object is associated with a specific setting or environment.

District:
A significant concentration, linkage, or continuity of sites, buildings, structures, or objects united historically or aesthetically by plan or physical environment.

Landscape:
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. National Register Bulletin 30, p.1-2).

Definition of terms (except landscape) excerpted from Instructions for Recording Historical Resources Office of Historic Preservation, January 1995.

Leigh Jordan
NWIC Coordinator