This year’s list of the country’s 11 most endangered historic sites includes Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, as well as Walden Pond and other nearby landmarks “of great significance in American history,” according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Trust, which for 35 years has been sounding the alarm over the abuse and neglect of America’s cultural heritage assets, unveiled its annual list Wednesday morning at The Old Manse in Concord. The annual ranking spotlights significant sites of American history that are at risk of destruction or irreparable damage.
Every year, Minute Man National Historical Park commemorates the opening battle of the American Revolutionary War. But the 970-acre site in and around Concord, Lexington, Lincoln, and Bedford, along with nearby Walden Pond, is threatened by the planned expansion of nearby Hanscom Field, the trust said in a press release.
Advertisement
“A proposed major expansion of nearby Hanscom Field airport could significantly increase private jet traffic, leading to increased noise, vehicular traffic, and negative environmental and climate impacts,” the Trust said in a statement. “A strong coalition has formed in opposition to this expansion, arguing that such an extraordinarily important historic area should not be impaired by a development of this scale and potential impact.”
The sprawling park also includes the preserved homesteads of famed American authors Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.
Actress Ashley Judd, representing the Trust, is due to speak at the unveiling of the annual list along with Massachusetts state Senator Mike Barrett. Historian Douglas Brinkley will address the attendees in a pre-recorded video message, the trust said.
In 1988, the first year the Trust issued its endangered places list, the sites seemed fairly traditional: Civil War battlefields, 19th-century mills, Colonial-era churches, and presidential homes.
Advertisement
Over the years, the sites have become more varied and far reaching.
This year’s list of sites span the globe, from New England to the US Virgin Islands, Los Angeles, Alaska, and Morocco, featuring former plantations, tribal homes, and a former diplomatic mission.
This year’s list “shows how our collective idea of American history has expanded in recent years, along with our ideas about which places are worth saving,” Carol Quillen, president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said in a statement. “Seventy-five years ago, widely recognized sites of national history were largely confined to the East Coast and ‘historic preservation’ was synonymous with the great architecture of our Founding Fathers.”
“That foundation is still important,” Quillen’s statement said. “But today there’s more recognition that history ought to help us tell the full American story, including that of groups and places previously left at the margins. That expanded perspective is reflected throughout this year’s list, particularly in the three sites located outside of the contiguous United States.”
The Estate Whim Museum in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, a former cotton and sugar plantation, suffers from repeated hurricane damage, while Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, one of four remaining Japantowns in the US, is endangered by large-scale development and transit projects, the Trust said.
In southeast Alaska, only eight of the original 43 Sitka Tlingit clan houses remain and even fewer function as centers of ceremony and tradition. Tlingit tribal citizens and allies are working to restore and preserve the structures, according to the Trust.
Advertisement
Meanwhile in Morocco, the Tangier American Legation was gifted to the US in 1821 by the nation’s sultan as a token of friendship. It served as a US diplomatic mission for 140 years and is now a cultural center, museum, and research library. An adjacent building recently collapsed, leaving the Legation in urgent need of structural stabilization and repairs, the Trust said.
The 2024 list featuring America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places can be found at www.SavingPlaces.org/11Most.
The initiative has galvanized public support behind more than 350 sites to date with only a handful lost, the Trust said.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.