By Taylor Picard, Staff Archaeologist
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the most important resource for those of us working on the preservation of historic properties that are associated with America’s history. The NRHP was established by the National Park Service (NPS) following the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and serves as the official list of these historic properties. It is a key component for NPS’s work to support efforts to preserve historic and archaeological resources on a national scale. What does this have to do with our work in Lake Champlain? A lot actually! Join me on an recent example of us working with the NRHP to nominate a shipwreck site.
The first thing to know is that not every property is eligible to be listed on the NRHP, as there is an extensive process to nominate a property. Yet also, not every property has to have national importance; in fact, eligible properties can have importance on a state or even local level – this is known as the historical context. Lake Champlain holds several shipwrecks that have been successfully nominated to the NRHP for their various levels of historic context. This ranges from local and state level sites, such General Butler and O.J. Walker that played a major role in the commercial development and expansion of Burlington, Vermont, New York, and Lake Champlain; to national levels, like the gunboat Spitfire that fought at the Battle of Valcour Bay, a major event on the lake during the American Revolution.
Recently, the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation (VHDP) was awarded a National Maritime Heritage Grant from NPS to add 40 sites to the Vermont Archaeological Inventory (learn more about that process here) and nominate a new property to the NRHP. VDHP provided a subgrant to Lake Champlain Maritime Museum to help complete these tasks, and it was determined that our most recent addition to the Vermont Underwater Historic Preserve, the Providence Island Canal Sloop, should be the property that gets nominated.
The first step of the nominating process is to identify the components that make the property important. This means determining the level of historic context of the property and which of the four criteria of Significance relates to the property. The four criteria of Significance are:
- Criterion A: Association with an important event or activities
- Criterion B: Association with an important person
- Criterion C: A building or structure that represents unique characteristics
- Criterion D: A property has important research value
The Museum decided to nominate the Providence Island Canal Sloop under criteria A, C, and D. The Providence Island Sloop is an 1841-class sailing canal sloop that operated on Lake Champlain and the Champlain Canal, which connected the Champlain Valley to the markets in the Hudson Valley and New York City. The Champlain Canal and the boats that operated on it played a very important role for both the Champlain Valley and the states of New York and Vermont (Criterion A). Additionally, these boats often had unique wooden construction methods (Criterion C), and the Providence Island Canal Sloop’s construction presents holds a tremendous amount of data about these construction methods as well as about the life of those living on these canal boats (Criterion D).
Along with Significance, the nomination must consider the Integrity of the property being nominated. Integrity describes how the property may have changed since the property became Significant and is important in determining if the property still conveys that Significance. Like the four criteria of Significance, there are seven aspects of Integrity that relate to the changes that have occurred since it became significant:
- Location: Has the property moved?
- Design: Has there been any changes to the design of the property?
- Setting: How has the area around the property changed?
- Materials: Is the property still made of the same materials?
- Workmanship: Does the property still represent the workmanship that went into it?
- Feeling: Does the property convey the feeling of its Significance?
- Association: Does the property still convey its association with the reason it is Significance?
A property does not need to represent all seven of these aspects but should maintain most of them to be eligible for nomination. For the Providence Island Canal Sloop, the Museum’s current position is that the site holds all seven aspects of integrity as the wreck is remarkably intact and still lays on the lakebed exactly where it came to rest after it sank.
A successful nomination demonstrates the level of historical context, the Significance, and Integrity of the property. The Museum submitted a 50% draft of the Providence Island Canal Sloop to the NPS in February for review. To complete the nomination, the Museum will be finishing a preliminary archaeological investigation that demonstrates that the wreck has the Significance and Integrity needed to be nominated to the NRHP. It is anticipated that the nomination and the photogrammetry model that is being produced for the nomination will be available to the public in 2026. Stay tuned!
As of May 9, 2025 the NRHP reached the 100,000 milestone of properties that had been listed for their significance to American history. For more information about the history of the NRHP, access the database of nominated sites, and see more details check out the NRHP website here.