The Timpanogos Cave Historic District is significant at the national level under Criterion A in the areas of Exploration/Settlement and Conservation and at the local level under Criterion C in the areas of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. The district’s significance under Criterion A is derived from its associations with the late nineteenth-century discovery and early exploration of Hansen Cave by local lumbermen and miners and the early twentieth-century effort to conserve the Timpanogos Cave System as a nationally important natural and scientific resource. The contributing resources within the district significant under Criterion A were built as part of the area’s initial development as a tourist site in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its development under US Forest Service protection and management from 1921 to 1933, or its development by the NPS under two significant twentieth-century federal funding programs: the New Deal (1933–1942) and Mission 66 (1956–1966).7 Buildings and landscape elements designed and constructed from 1921 to 1966 are significant under Criterion C as examples of NPS Rustic and Mission 66 architectural forms and styles.
This documentation expands the existing Timpanogos Cave Historic District boundary to encompass 130 acres of the 250-acre Monument and provides additional relevant information about the district’s development and significance. The period of significance for Criteria A and C extends from the construction of the first major access road through American Fork Canyon in 1878 to the completion of the Mission 66 development program in the Monument in 1966.
