By —Tim McPhillips
America’s historic monuments – both natural landmarks and human-built structures – draw millions each year to witness and pay tribute to our simultaneously rich and painful heritage. But summertime, when many of us get the chance to play tourist, is also the start of hurricane and wildfire seasons – a reminder that the physical markers of our history are at risk from the effects of a changing climate.
“Historic places are primary sources, just like documents, diaries and letters. They tell us about ourselves. And they tell us about the complex and intertwined shared narrative of our country,” said Katherine Malone-France, chief preservation officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit working to preserve historic places in America.
Unless global carbon dioxide emissions are cut drastically, the Earth will sail past the 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius threshold seen as our best chance to rein in the most severe consequences of climate change. And as the temperature of the planet increases, scientists say, so will the intensity and frequency of heat waves, storms and other extreme weather events, as well as the risk to cultural treasures.
READ MORE: We have the tools to save the planet from climate change. Politics is getting in the way, new IPCC report says
Right now, these landmarks prompt visitors to “think about ourselves and our stories and our actions as part of a larger continuum. We are part of something bigger than ourselves,” Malone-France said. But losing that history to climate change means we also lose a chance at connection with “each other’s heritage and accomplishments and stories.”
Here are five historic places at serious risk.
1. Jamestown
An aerial view of Jamestown from 2016 showing the reconstructed fort walls. The western bulwark (bottom left) has already washed into the river before the 1901 seawall was constructed to halt erosion. Photo by Danny Schmidt/ Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation
When British sailors arrived in 1607 at the strip of land that would become Jamestown, Virginia, it was not an island, but a small peninsula in the James River, just up from where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. The English colonists chose it for their first permanent settlement in North America, in part for its defensive outlook to guard against Spanish forces.
At the time, the area had already been home to Indigenous people for thousands of years, and the Powhatan tribe clashed with the hostile British newcomers as they tried to form a new colony and took over more land. Jamestown is also significant for its role in the tragic history of American slavery; in 1619, the first Africans who had been captured, enslaved and brought to English-controlled North America arrived in Jamestown.
Today, low-lying Jamestown is surrounded by water. Visitors in 2022 can still see the ruins of the original British fort, as well as the town settlement that formed after the fort, operated through a partnership between the U.S. National Park Service and Historic Jamestowne, a nonprofit organization.
Depending on what climate action is taken, the Chesapeake could rise 1 to 5 feet in the coming century, according to the University of Maryland’s state sea level rise report, and data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests a 1 to 2 foot rise would submerge a significant portion of the island.
Preserving Jamestown, which is on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2022 list of Most Endangered Historic Places, is as complex and intertwined as its history, said Malone-France. Plans are already in place to rebuild seawalls, raise land, and install pumps. But “we are going to have to make decisions, too, about what we can’t save,” she added.
2. Ponce Historic Zone
Catedral de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, Plaza Munoz Rivera, in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress
The Ponce Historic Zone, which made the National Trust’s 2020 most endangered list, is a collection of more than 1,000 structures in Puerto Rico’s second-largest city, ranging from schools to businesses to civic buildings.. According to Malone-France, this architectural treasure trove represents a “rich combination of cultural resources that tell the stories of Puerto Rico and its history.”
But buildings erected in the 1800s are not equipped to handle the storms of today and beyond. Hurricane Maria made landfall on the island in September 2017 as a Category 4 storm. Ponce, located on the southern coast, got 5 to 10 inches of rain and was struck by wind gusts nearing 100 miles per hour, damaging many of the buildings. Earthquakes that have rattled the island have also taken a toll.
Investment in these buildings is needed now, before the next direct hit from a hurricane, Malone-France said. “We have to do even more preparation in our preservation because the storms that impact places like Ponce, they are incredibly unpredictable. But we know that they are not going to stop.”
For this city, that means mapping the existing edifices, then working to improve resiliency against high winds, as well as improving drainage systems.
3. Boston Harbor Islands
Boston Light, located in Boston Harbor. Photo by Boston Harbor Now
The islands that are located in Boston Harbor are a sacred site of commemoration for Indigenous Americans and, Malone-France said, “the most intact Native American archeological landscape within the city.” According to the U.S. National Park Service, Indigienous people lived on the islands from spring until late fall, fishing, hunting and planting crops before European colonizers arrived. As European settlers arrived and took over more land, they forced an unknown number of Native people to relocate to the islands in the 1670s. There, they were kept captive and many died of starvation.
Decades later, colonists built the Boston Light, the first lighthouse in North America, on Little Brewster Island. During the Revolutionary war, it was a target of both American and British forces and was completely destroyed in 1776 before being rebuilt in 1783.
Today, the islands still serve a key environmental purpose, helping shield the inner Boston Harbor from large waves rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean. But storms and sea level rise are chipping away the coast, taking history with it.
According to Mallone-France, “The threat to the Boston Harbor Islands really comes from storm surges, which are intensifying, which means that coastal erosion is intensifying.”
In response, Boston has developed an “archeology climate plan,” to survey and manage the harbor’s archeological assets, while working to find solutions for restoring the islands’ coastlines.
4. Olivewood Cemetery
Photo courtesy Descendants of Olivewood
Houston’s oldest plotted Black cemetery, Olivewood, was incorporated in 1875, 10 years after the end of chattel slavery in Texas. Buried there are many prominent figures from the community, including some who had been enslaved.
“They are the graves of Black citizens who built Houston and who were critical to its history and its development,” Malone-France said. The cemetery is also listed as UNESCO Site of Memory on the Slave Route Project, which recogonizes places associated with the international slave trade.
The Descendants of Olivewood, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the grounds, has worked to restore and maintain the cemetery for over 30 years. But the land and the gravesites face rising threats of erosion caused by storms and flooding, which is why the National Trust for Historic Preservation highlighted it as a most endangered place this year.
“First, they had to fight against the fact that it had been neglected and overgrown,” Malone-France said about the group dedicated to Olivewood. “Then they had to fight against encroaching development all around it… Now they are facing increasingly severe storms, whether they are single storms like Hurricane Harvey or a succession of smaller, more severe storms.”
An increase in the frequency and severity of wet weather poses a unique risk for Olivewood Cemetery, Malone-France said. “These storms put graves under water for significant periods of time. They deposited silt and other erosion throughout the cemetery, and they damage the tombstones and other markers.”
5. New Mexico monuments
Bandelier National Monument. Photo by Sally King/ NPS
In Bandelier National Monument, around 40 miles northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, evidence of human habitation dates back 11,000 years. More recently, Ancestral Puebolans lived there until about 1550, when they moved on to other areas, due in part to severe drought, according to the National Park Service. Today, 23 Indigenous tribes consider it to be tribal or ancestral land.
It’s not water or storms that most endanger this landscape, but wildfires fueled by extreme heat and drought. While wildfire is a natural part of the ecosystem in the American West, climate change is driving conditions for more frequent, severe fires. As of late May, nearly the entire state of New Mexico was experiencing severe or exceptional drought, and that has helped lead to one of the worst fire years in the state’s history.
To the east of Bandelier, the state’s largest wildfire – sparked by a prescribed burn – has been spreading for almost two months, and has destroyed more than 315,000 acres. In late April, the park was shut down due to danger from the Cerro Pelado fire, which is now 95 percent contained.
While it can take years to notice rising sea levels, wildfires are unpredictable and fast-moving.
“We’re going to have to let landscapes change and evolve in sensitive ways,” Malone-France said, and preserving monuments like Bandelier is about being good stewards of the land.
The first step, she added, is to “make sure we understand the full extent of the resources that are threatened.” From there, investments and changes, like cutting firebreaks and clearing understory growth in forests, can help protect cultural landscapes from fires.
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