National Parks Traveler Podcast · Kurt Repanshek

National Parks Traveler Podcast | Historic Preservation

·48 min·3 clips

Rhodes says history is really about identity, not memorizing dates and places.

1. National Parks Traveler’s episode on historic preservation centers on Monica Rhodes and the question of how parks hold history. 2. Kurt Repencheck hosts Monica Rhodes, who led the HOPE Crew program at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and now runs the Rhodes Heritage Group. 3. The episode asks whether history can be erased, or whether people and places keep it alive anyway. 4. Rhodes explains that HOPE Crew, launched by the National Trust in 2014, stood for Hands-On Preservation Experience. 5. She says the program brought young people and adults from many backgrounds into preservation work as trades professionals, students, and volunteers. 6. Rhodes gives examples such as cleaning headstones at Chalmette National Cemetery in New Orleans and repainting a baseball stadium. 7. She says the program lowered barriers to a field often seen as elitist and created paid opportunities to learn preservation skills. 8. Rhodes says the youngest HOPE Crew member she recalls was about 7 or 5 and the oldest was about 75. 9. She describes the National Mall and Arlington Cemetery as early places that made history feel real to her. 10. She argues that preservation helps people understand their own identity and the nation’s identity. 11. Rhodes says there is no separate “good history” and “bad history,” only history, truth, fact, fiction, and interpretation. 12. She says Americans are strong enough to grapple with difficult pasts without minimizing complexity. 13. Rhodes frames public history as a public process that requires groups of people to decide what stories and values matter. 14. She says the Save Our Signs project at the University of Minnesota shows how ordinary people can document interpretive signs before they disappear. 15. Rhodes says she is not overly concerned about erasure because history lives in places and in people. 16. She adds that preservation has always depended on regular people, local action, and years of organizing before federal recognition. 17. Rhodes describes her current firm, the Rhodes Heritage Group, as a cultural heritage strategy company working with communities, governments, cities, and development firms. 18. She says the company focuses on how the past shows up on the landscape and how people interact with it in the present. 19. The interview sounds conversational and reflective, with Kurt Repencheck pressing on federal policy, staffing, and the Grand Canyon Lodge fire. 20. Listeners interested in national parks, preservation policy, and public history would get the most from it; listeners seeking a quick park-news recap may skip it.

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