Draft Programmatic Agreement for Buildings and Structures at Cold War Era Dedicated Instrumentation Sites: White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico

Since 1966, when the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) was signed into law, federal agencies have been required to consider their impact to known or potential historic resources under their jurisdiction. As a potentially costly and onerous process for large government installations such as the military, the law allows for procedures known as “program alternatives” which allow federal agencies to streamline the requirements for inventorying and evaluating categories of, or similar resources (in this case, buildings and structures) for their potential as historic resources.This Capstone project seeks to capture a category of such resources, building and structures at Cold War Era dedicated instrumentation sites on the Ranges of White Sands Missile Range. By creating a historic context in which to identify these resources and put them into historical perspective, as well as identifying close to two hundred of such repetitive resources, a draft Programmatic Agreement was crafted to provide an alternative to the costly effort of individually inventorying and evaluating each property for National Register of Historic Places eligibility.