Our Mission

To stimulate public interest in American heritage travel and education, historic preservation and natural conservation. To create innovative programs to digitize, distribute and utilize valuable works of local history, biography and folklore for the benefit of all Americans.

We believe every American should understand and value our historic and natural heritage. If we neglect our history and our natural resources, that which God has entrusted to us, we will surely lose all that our forefathers fought so hard to preserve and protect.

Without some new strategies, much of local history is doomed to extinction. Many fine local memoirs & photos lie unpublished, lonely copies decaying in the basements of grandchildren, while many local histories have always had very limited print runs on less than durable media. Meanwhile, more local historic structures, farms, and scenic assets are destroyed every day, victims of senseless, greedy and rampant urban population growth. It is time that we motivate and organize a new generation of American history enthusiasts.

A primary goal of the Federal Writers' Project was to encourage Americans to re-discover their heritage - in particular the contributions of common folks, the people who really built our nation. Operating in that spirit, but without government controls, our vision to create a national community heritage project, one which gets all Americans to participate and understand the roots of our society, our beliefs, and our successes and failures, to benefit future generations. We want to make history, traditions, and natural resources easily accessible to every American.

To do so, we really need to reach into their I-PODs and MySpaces, and get the attention of our children and grandchildren, using the tools they understand. We're starting with this web site, but we hope you can help us expand way beyond this particular technology in the future!  

Our Primary Audience (Site Users)

1. Students and teachers should find the site useful for research and school projects. Much of our material is rare and non-existent on the web, yet is easily accessible and well-organized via our web site. Meanwhile, our digital photo collection brings much of our local heritage to life.

2. Heritage tourists & history buffs will find the web site useful for pre-travel research, or to obtain a deeper understanding of any point of interest.

3. Volunteers, donors & investors - you may find organizations, properties & natural areas which need your time and investment. We try to provide information & contacts useful to those with resources to help.

Content (What we're publishing)

1. Works already in the public domain - i.e., they have no copyright restrictions. This includes works published prior to 1923, and works published between 1923-1962 without a properly renewed copyright, and some others. It also includes any works created by federal government employees, such as the American Guides.

2. Copyrighted works with permission of the copyright owner. For instance, the Denver Public Library and the Stephen Hart Library of the Colorado Historical Society have granted our project permission to use 120,000 previously digitized photos from the Digital Image Collection ion the DPL Western History & Genealogy Department.

3. Local amateur historical articles, books & photo collections, copyrighted by your local school, library or historical society.

4. Complete books or excerpts of works by published authors, photographers, artists, etc. For works with a current or potential market, this is an excellent way to obtain significant ongoing exposure for the author and the work itself. Works currently in print are linked in our online bookstore.

5. Information on nearby heritage museums, parks and other public resources.

6. Local Sponsor information - local businesses and other organizations which support our goals, and provide goods and services of interest to our users.

7. Our own works, in any and all media.    

Organization

Topics are generally arranged hierarchically by state, county and locality. Subjects are generally referenced at the local or regional level, and also accessible by subject indexes and keywords.    

Technology

We utilize some of the leading tools for creating online knowledge bases and instruction systems - Ehelp and other tools from Adobe Systems, Inc. This enables us to publish and organize large numbers of topics, in addition to chapters, keyword indexing, glossaries, and "see also" references. Our pages will resize neatly within your browser and should print just fine in portrait mode on 8.5 x 11 paper.

Kevin Obenchain, MBA, CPA

Executive Director & Editor