Judge rejects bid to preserve site of coalfield battle

West Virginia's Blair Mountain, the site of the largest armed conflict in U.S. labor history, will remain off the National Register of Historic Places, a federal judge has ruled. The site was added to the list in 2009, but the Interior Department removed it after it was found that a majority of property owners didn't support the listing, Paul Nyden of The Charleston Gazette reports.

Coal companies may mine the area, and a lawsuit was filed in 2010 by several groups, including the Sierra Club, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Friends of Blair Mountain, seeking to restore the area to the register. Judge Reggie Walton of the District of Columbia ruled that the groups had no legal standing because no coal companies had announced "immediate plans to begin mining on Blair Mountain," Nyden reports. (Read more)

Ken Ward Jr. of the Gazette's Coal Tattoo puts it this way: "The judge ruled that the citizen groups could not meet one of the requirements to show 'standing' to bring the case, that of 'redressability,' or that a favorable ruling from the court would redress their injury." As a result, the judge said in his decision "that the surface mining would be permitted on the Blair Mountain Battlefield as a result of permits that were acquired prior to the historic district's inclusion on the National Register."

In 1921, more than 10,000 union miners fought with armed company employees and contractors along the ridge along the Logan-Boone County border for a number of things, including better working conditions. The battle lasted eight days, and only ended after federal troops and air support intervened.

Budget cuts have put strain on national parks, and seem likely to put even more

National parks have been struggling for more than a decade against a tide of federal budget cuts that have left them short-staffed and with little money for upkeep and repairs. Construction and maintenance projects have been put on hold, and Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post reports "the signs of strain" are starting to show at parks across the country. (Photo: Gettysburg National Military Park)

Chatham Manor, the 241-year-old Georgian house that was a Union headquarters near Fredericksburg, Va., during the Civil War, is marred by overgrown gardens and a greenhouse with broken windows and rotting wood frames. The 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway, which stretches from Virginia to North Carolina, has a $385 million backlog of projects and hasn't been able to fill 75 positions since 2003. New Mexico's Bandelier National Monument doesn't have money to hire someone to protect its archeological ruins.

Eilperin reports parks have been pulling from maintenance and acquisition budgets to run day-to-day operations for years. National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis told Eilperin his employees have been "entrepreneurial" in finding ways around budget cuts, but are "kind of running out of ideas at some point here." Park managers say they are scared about next year's federal budget and what might happen if a budget deal isn't reached by January. The current proposal from the House Appropriations Committee would cut 218 full-time jobs or 763 seasonal employees at the parks. (Read more)

National Endowment for the Arts partners with design group to improve rural communities

The National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Project for Public Spaces will partner with the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design to "enhance the quality of life and economic viability of rural areas ... through design workshops that gather local leaders together with experts in planning, design and creative placemaking to assist with locally identified issues," according to a press release.

CIRD has hosted more than 60 workshops in all regions of the U.S. since its inception in 1991. It works with communities with fewer than 50,000 people and focusses on downtown revitalization, arts-based development, heritage preservation, land and agricultural conservation, growth management and transportation. The organization will develop guidelines for communities to apply to host a workshop. Application deadlines will be announced this Fall, and selected communities should be announced in January 2013. (Read more)

Historic post offices up for sale or already sold; National Trust, communities want them preserved

The U.S. Postal Service has been selling off post-office buildings as a way to save money and "downsize its retail network," Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office writes. But The National Trust for Historic Preservation is stepping in to try and save some historic offices by collectively placing the buildings on its list of the most endangered historic places. The post offices include those in Geneva, Ill., La Jolla, Calif. (left), Gulfport, Miss. and Fernandina Beach, Fla.

The Trust said on its website that city officials and preservationists "find themselves frustrated by a lack of information and guidance from the U.S. Postal Service" when they find buyers for historic offices. "Local post office buildings have traditionally played an essential role in the lives of millions of Americans. Many are architecturally distinctive, prominently located, and cherished as civic icons in communities across the country. Unless the U.S. Postal Service establishes a clear, consistent process that follows federal preservation law when considering disposal of these buildings, a significant part of the nation’s architectural heritage will be at risk."

The USPS owns about 9,000 of its 32,000 offices, Hutkins writes. The others are in leased spaces. Of those it owns, about 2,500 are either on the National Register of Historic Places or are eligible to be listed. More than 1,000 post offices were built during the New Deal, including the one in La Jolla, and are significant for the murals and sculptures they contain, which Postal Service Historian Dallen Wordekemper said are "often prized more than the buildings themselves."

Many of the New Deal post offices have already been sold as of last year, Hutkins reports. USPS partnered with the largest commercial real-estate company in the world, CB Richard Ellis, to manage sales. About 80 post offices are listed for sale on a USPS real-estate website, and many are historic. At least 38 historic post offices in 19 states have been sold or put on the market, most of them in rural places. Eleven are in California, 4 are in Connecticut, and three each are in Pennsylvania and Illinois.