Las Vegas City Wire

The National Park Service (NPS) has awarded $1 million in Underrepresented Community Grants to 22 projects in 16 states, including a $38,336 grant to the city of Las Vegas for the Rafael Rivera Historic Context and Survey. The Underrepresented Community Grant Program focuses on diversifying the nominations submitted to the National Register of Historic Places in order to preserve more of the nation’s history and tell a more complete story of the nation’s diversity. Las Vegas will use the funds to research and determine eligibility of historic sites in the Rafael Rivera study area, also known as the Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Area.

The city has contracted with the cultural resource management firm, Broadbent & Associates, Inc., to work on the project, which is a historic context and reconnaissance level survey of resources dating from 1940 to 1969 that are associated with the Latino community, within the Rafael Rivera study area. The area is roughly bounded by South Bruce Street, Wengert Avenue, North Mojave Road and Interstate 515. The research component will require the consultant to gather information on the historic background of the neighborhood and potential historic resources associated with the Latino community. 

This will include past people or persons, including property developers, specific events, and trends that are significant to the history of the Latino community within the neighborhood. The fieldwork component will entail conducting a reconnaissance-level field survey of standing architectural resources dating between 1940 and 1969 in the Rafael Rivera study area. 

The final product will be a report including a detailed history of the neighborhood and its development during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, including any connections to the Latino community that will include digital images of the overall neighborhood, maps identifying neighborhood characteristics, identification of neighborhood resources and their proposed contributing status to the National Register of Historic Places as well any resources that may be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Underrepresented Community Grant program is supported by the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF). The HPF uses revenue from federal oil leases on the Outer Continental Shelf to assist with a broad range of preservation projects without expending tax dollars, with the intent to mitigate the loss of a nonrenewable resource to benefit the preservation of other irreplaceable resources. Established in 1977, the HPF is authorized at $150 million per year through 2023 and has provided more than $2 billion in historic preservation grants to states, tribes, local governments, and nonprofit organizations. Administered by the NPS, HPF funds may be appropriated by Congress to support a variety of historic preservation projects to help preserve the nation’s cultural resources.

For more information on historic preservation in the city of Las Vegas, visit the webpage or email dsiebrandt@lasvegasnevada.gov.

Original source can be found here.