Earlier this month, the State Historic Preservation Office and Preservation Utah hosted the Preservation Engaged conference in Provo. As always, it was an amazing event and such a cool opportunity for cultural resource professionals, folks involved in preservation, land managers and other Utah partners to get together and learn from one another.
This year, UCSS facilitated a panel where we brought in non-agency land managers who have taken it upon themselves to protect the cultural resources on the land they manage including; (left to right) Randy Graham, private land owner, Kaylee Morris-Swasey, private ranch owner, Jennifer Melton, Alta Environmental Center, Gordon Robinson, Tintic Consolidated Metals, and Shanna Memmott, Juab County Tourism.
We partner with all of the awesome state and federal land managers in Utah and we can’t thank them enough for their partnership and support. One of the reasons we focused on non-agency land managers for this panel is because cultural heritage management is not part of their job at all. However, they are making the effort to do what they can to best preserve the tangible archaeology and human stories that fall in their jurisdiction. The way they have gone about doing this has been creative and inspiring, and they continue to be successful in their own field while safeguarding Utah’s cultural heritage.
Shout out to the UCSS reps!
We also want to thank the many Utah Cultural Site Stewards that were in attendance at the event, supporting the SHPO office. It is always great to see so many familiar faces and we hope each of you had a great experience.
Last but not least, we want to highlight UCSS Stewards Holly Scott and Dan Garey (pictured for another event) for taking the time to join the conference and taking the time to help out to make sure things were running smoothly. They have also helped out with many other projects this year and we truly appreciate the time and resources they have used to assist UCSS and our land managing partners.
Didn’t make it this year? Mark your calendars for next June (exact date TBD). We hope to continue to overload the Preservation Engaged conference with so many wonderful people who work hard to safeguard Utah’s history.