Introduction

[Nick Redding] At first glance, it might seem strange to think of an archaeologist working in a state highway administration office; but in reality, the two go hand in hand. Julie Schablitsky has conducted archaeological research and digs everywhere from Scotland to Maryland to California. She’s utilized augmented reality to allow people to explore reconstructions of slave quarters, and she’s done all of this as well as being the chief of the Cultural Resources Section at the Maryland State Highway Administration. Move out of the passing lane, you don’t want to miss this week’s PreserveCast.

From Preservation Maryland Studios in the historic podcast district of Baltimore, this is PreserveCast.

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[Nick Redding] This is Nick Redding. You’re listening to PreserveCast. We’re joined today in studio by Julie Schablitsky, who is the chief of Culture Resources at the Maryland State Highway Administration. She has her doctorate from Portland State University in Oregon with an emphasis in urban archaeology. And after graduation, she carried out research on overseas Chinatowns, the Donner Party of California, as well as the medieval estate of Amisfield in Scotland. Her Maryland research has included focusing on a War of 1812 battlefield in Kent County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, as well as the cultural landscape along the General’s Highway in Anne Arundel County, and the search for Rochambeau’s Revolutionary War encampments. It’s a pleasure to have you here in studio today to talk about all these fun things that you’ve been working on at State Highway.

[Julie Schablitsky] Thanks for having me.

[NR] So how does one – we’ve talked to some archaeologists before and it’s always interesting to kind of get a sense for what takes you on the path to become an archaeologist. Growing up, did you know you always wanted to be an archaeologist?

[JS] Yeah, I always knew I wanted to be an archaeologist since the age of seven. And people always ask, “Well, how did that interest begin?” And I grew up in Minnesota and all of our driveways in the country are covered with limestone gravel, and so if you look closely, there’s all these little fossils in those limestone pebbles, and that kind of got me interested in history in general. And then I grew up with uncles who liked to walk the farm fields looking for arrowheads, and so then it began from there. And I started looking at all different books, whether it was King Tutankhamun in Egypt, Meso-American. I think that’s how a lot of kids get started and interested in archaeology is trying to look at that archaeology from the faraway places. And then in the end, you end up digging in your own backyard.

[NR] So it’s interesting because not all of the other archaeologists we’ve interviewed knew they wanted to do it since they were age seven. You’ve been set on it from that early age. And so you immediately, in college, kind of went on that path into anthropology and started going in that direction?

[JS] Absolutely. At the age of fifteen was my first archaeological dig. I ended up having a friend who had a boyfriend who was in college and he was going to go on this archaeology dig on the border of Iowa and South Dakota. I said, “Well, can I go with?” And they’re like, “Absolutely.” And so we spent the day out digging in Native America trash bits, and that where I met the archaeologist I was going to study under during my undergraduate career.

[NR] Wow. And so did you stay in school until you got your PhD? Did you stay right through or did you stop and do some work in the field? Or how did that all come together?

[JS] I pretty much went straight through. There was a period where between my Master’s and my PhD I took a couple of years off to get some more experience. That’s one thing that I think that was good for my career is that I made sure that every single summer I was in the field digging or doing something related to my discipline. And then by the time I had my Master’s degree, I took two years working for the Forest Service in Oregon and that’s where I was able to lead crews, record sites, and just really get out there and get my hands dirty.

[NR] Literally.

[JS] Literally, yeah [laughter]. And then by the time, I’d had a couple of years where I kind of felt like I needed something more. And at that point, I started looking at PhD programs and I settled at Portland State University since they had an Urban Studies department that also did urban history, but yet we also had a pretty nice Master’s degree program at the Portland State University with Ken Ames and Virginia Butler. So those two individuals really helped me get my program together where I was able to get a doctorate degree in Urban Archaeology.

[NR] And it’s interesting, urban archaeology, because everything you’ve described to this point, you were in farm fields and it kind of sounds kind of like rural areas. South Dakota… why the shift then to urban? It just kind of piqued your interest at that point?

[JS] Yeah, urban archaeology’s very interesting. It’s very complex. When you think about the way that sites are created, if you’re in the middle of farm field you can imagine there’s someone camping there and then over time, it gets buried by wind, and leaves, and erosion, and alluvial waterborne forces. And with urban archaeology you have human beings going in there and messing with the space. So you have fill-up episodes, you have building, you have more building, you have bulldozing away of layers, and so it really is more of a challenge. But I think the reason my interest was piqued in urban archaeology is because it was something different. It was something that was going to set me apart from other people.  And I think that’s the goal as an archaeologist was you wanted to have some sort of skill, whether it’s reading soils in a complex environment or studying animal bones or paleobotany. You want to do something that’s going to set you apart.

[NR] And so is that what then set you up or qualified you to work for a highway administration? It doesn’t really seem like it’s urban but it definitely is the kind of archaeology where it’s been messed with by people, I guess.

[JS] Right. By the time I got my PhD, I was actually supervising a site that was going to be constructed as part of the Portland State University system. A building was going to be built in this location and I was hired on to do the archaeology. And while I was doing that I saw that there was an Oregon Department of Transportation position that opened up and since I had just graduated, I needed a job. I wasn’t pulled into academics. I mean, that was an option but I never felt that I had to do it, so I kept my dance book open if you will. So I went ahead and I saw the job, I applied for it, and then the rest is history.

I just kept on seeing that there was this beautiful opportunity where you had really active archaeology, really active archaeo-history surveys happening because transportation departments across a state, each one funds the most research in each one of those states. So in Maryland, for example, we fund probably over $1-2 million worth of archaeological research and archaeo-history surveys in the state each year.

[NR] Which is the most of any –

[JS] That is the most of any agency university system. So that means that you have this wonderful opportunity to get out into the public and to use this state and federal funding to do something important.

[NR] Yeah, and I think that that’s perhaps something people aren’t familiar with or aware of is how much work is happening within our state highway administrations all across the country. So when did you end up in Maryland? How long have you been in your current position?

[JS] I’ve been in Maryland for about thirteen years. When I first came over from Oregon I had been here a year and I had a University of Oregon research position where I was finishing up work on overseas Chinese sites, and then also the Donner Party of California. So I was kind of wrapping up my West Coast adventures and then, once I came here, I began right away at the State Highway Administration and kind of picked up where I left off when I was in Oregon.

[NR] And before we jump into State Highway, I feel like the listeners wouldn’t be okay with us not picking up on what you’ve done with the Donner Party because I think that’s pretty interesting. You dropped an interesting little nugget there. What all happened there, what did you do, what work was done on that, and what’d you find?

[JS] Yeah, the Donner Party of California, it’s one of these cautionary westward tales where you have a group of emigrants who are leaving everything they know behind to go or across the mountains, the prairies, the plains to find something new and better for themselves and for their children. And what we had there, we had a situation where we have this group of pioneers in order to survive they had to resort to survival cannibalism and our job as archaeologists – at that point I was a free agent, I think I just got done with my PhD at that point. And I had the opportunity to work through the Discovery Channel who funded us a little bit of money to begin to explore the Donner Party, specifically the camp at Alder Creek.

Some people don’t know that there are actually two locations where the Donner Party wintered. One was at Donner Lake and the other one was at Alder Creek in the meadow and that’s where I looked at, the place where they had wintered. So you have a group of people, probably a couple dozen, who tried to survive and after going months without real food they took the last thing they could, which was the remains of their loved ones and had to consume them to survive.

[NR] And did you actually find something from that sort of short of an experience?

[JS] Yeah, that’s the thing is that these sorts of – the camps are so ephemeral. So there’s not a lot of – there’s not bricks and stones of foundations. You’re looking at a group of two dozen people who wintered in a meadow and camped in a campsite, so you’re looking for a little fire hearth. You’re looking for locations of where they had their tents and, of course, that’s kind of difficult so how do you find that? And in this case we went ahead and we used metal detectors to look for nails. We looked for buttons and that kind of honed us into approximate location where “X” marked the spot and then from there we’ve been to excavate and then we found the broken dishes, we found the lost buttons, we found little bits of writing slate.

But what things we did not find, we didn’t find human remains and people always said, well doesn’t that prove that the cannibalism didn’t happen? And the answer is no. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so in this sort of situation we had to go ahead and look at the historical record again and try and understand what was happening with the soils. And we came to conclusion that the human remains, the bone that was in the ground, quickly disintegrated because it was in such acidic soil. The only bone that we ever had survive was the bone that was chopped up, boiled and burned and calcined, which means that it gets so hot and so exposed to fire and heat that becomes almost like porcelain, so then it survives in the archaeological record.

So we did have evidence of them eating oxen and even deer which introduced the Native American element because it showed that we had Native Americans coming in trying to help the Donner Party, which is also related in the oral history of the tribes. So we basically, even though we didn’t find human remains it caused to go back into the historical record and to, in a sense, resurrect those stories again and it also gave us a chance to look at the Native American narrative because there is a whole nother tale there.

[NR] Interesting, so is that – we can talk more about this and the different projects you work on. But is that one of your favorites or…?

[JS] The Donner Party is a favorite project, but it was also a very complex and full of a lot of drama. Just –

[NR] Cause it was designed for reality TV almost, right?

[JS] It was basically and so – but it was a good project. There was a book that came out of it and it won an award, the James Deetz Book Award from the Society for Historical Archaeology. So it was a good project, but that’s kind of ancient history now.

[NR] [laughter] So back to State Highway Administration. What exactly do you do there? What’s your job at State Highway?

[JS] My job at the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration is to oversee the Cultural Resources section there. So I have a team of architectural historians, I have a team leader and I also have other archaeologists. And so there’s about a dozen people in there who do a couple different things. Most of them look at section 106, which is National Historic Preservation Act, which causes us by law to consider our impacts on archaeological sites in architectural history. So historic bridges historic buildings, structures, anything that’s 50 to 75 years of age, we need to consider impacts to those. And the other part of that section also looks at reaching out to the public. So we have a public outreach program, which primarily targets historic archaeology sites across the state. And so what you’ll do is you’ll see my group all across the state at different times, at least throughout the last decade, looking at sites that we can learn something more about, but also really putting a lot of effort into reaching out to the public. So that means I’ll be giving, and my team will be giving public presentations. We’ll be creating pamphlets. We’ll be going and creating even digital media that –

[NR] Speaking on podcasts.

[JS] Yes, speaking on podcasts, that’s why I’m here. So all these sorts of things is in an effort to not only tell people that, yes, we have this great team of cultural resource professionals out there that are getting before the bulldozers get out there and before we demolish bridges, before we impact historic sites. That we’re trying to design ways and plan ways to avoid, minimize or mitigate our impacts to these resources. And so there’s teams of people doing that and we spend millions of dollars doing such things in these efforts.

[NR] Yes, it’s pretty exciting, a lot of cool work that’s going on. And why don’t we take a quick break and then when we come back we can talk a little bit about some of the more advanced technological things you’re doing and some of the 3D modeling that’s happening across the state and other things that you’re funding that are sort of at the forefront of archaeology and the interpretation of it, and we’ll do that right here on PreserveCast.

And now it’s time for a Preservation Explanation

[Stephen Israel] President’s Day is on the horizon. Once the holiday was really only focused on the birthday of just the first president, George Washington. But since the placement of the Federal observation of the holiday was changed in the 1970s to create more three-day weekends in the national working calendar and because of its proximity to Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, the holiday has come to be a time to remember all the great presidents. Now you’re probably familiar with the Washington, D.C. Lincoln Memorial. The massive columns in the imposing nineteen-foot tall statue of our sixteenth president have become nearly inseparable from the popular memory of Lincoln. But something you might be a little less familiar with is the first Lincoln Memorial.

Located in the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park and constructed years before its big-city counterpart, the first major memorial to Abraham Lincoln is actually in LaRue County, Kentucky. Some elements are shared between the two structures albeit at a different scale. The Kentucky Lincoln Memorial’s six exterior Greco-Roman columns don’t create quite as grand a look as the D.C. Memorial’s thirty-six. But while the D.C. Memorial helped us to remember president Lincoln, the hero and almost mythical guardian of the Union, the Kentucky Memorial helps to remind us of the very human story of Abraham Lincoln’s early life.

Because along with the memorial building, the park also houses a reconstructed log cabin which, at the time, was believed to have been made out of some of the same logs as the cabin Lincoln famously was raised in. In fact, the cabin was constructed before the rest of the memorial in the 1890s while the rest of the park wasn’t formally established until 1911. But those logs? Not really Lincoln’s. Although the Lincoln logs aren’t genuine they are, at this point, over 100 years old and the cabin itself remains part of the park as a “symbolic birthplace cabin.” Now there might be something poetic as we approach President’s Day and thinking about Lincoln’s honest reputation and the fact that someone along the way likely lied about the logs that were or were not used to build his family’s cabin. But I’m not a poet and I know it, and you’ve got to get back to PreserveCast.

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Do you have questions? We may have answers. If at any point during this podcast you thought of a question that you have for us or maybe one of our guests, we’d love to hear about it. You can send an e-mail to podcast@presmd.org and we’ll try and answer it right here on the air on the next episode of PreserveCast.

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[NR] This is Nick Redding. You’re listening to PreserveCast. We’re joined today in the studio by Julie Schablitsky who is the Chief of Cultural Resources Section at the Maryland State Highway Administration. And before we took our break, we were talking about what exactly it is the State Highway Administration does and what Julie’s work there involves and she was talking and telling us about the public outreach component. Some of the interesting things that you guys have been working on recently has involved 3D modeling. Do you want to tell us more about one of those projects and why you decided to do that and what that can tell you about these archaeological sites?

[JS] The great thing about 3D modeling whether you use LiDAR, which is a scanning type of system, or you use a drone to capture the images is it really gives you the ability and flexibility to reconstruct what has happened or what had been there. I think my favorite project has been Belvoir, which is a place – it’s a plantation in the Anne Arundel County, along General’s Highway where we ended up finding a 32′ x 32′ square stone slave quarter. And after excavating it, we were able to reconstruct where different rooms were within the building. We were able to say, “This is where the fireplace was. This is where they stored some of their food. This is where the kitchen was. This is where the bedrooms were.” And with all that information that archaeology gave us, we were then able to then to reconstruct not just the exterior of the building but also the interior.

So that really brought to life, because the important thing about Belvoir, which has that slave quarter, was that there’s a descendant community that we were able to share that with. So they could then, in a sense, walk in the footsteps of their ancestors and see where they lived, what they saw, and it was really an important moment. And it shows two things, I think. It shows that this technology is able to literally have you time-travel.

[NR] Right.

But I think the other important part is it really allows you to stop the archaeology speak and talk to the public on the level that they can understand you, which I think is sometimes something we stumble over. So that’s the great thing, you don’t need words. You can use these images to really communicate what you’re seeing and –

[NR] Yes, it kind of brings to life – I mean, sometimes archaeology can, particularly when its bits and pieces of little things, it’s difficult for the public to grasp why that matters and you can kind of reconstruct it into something that anybody can understand. I guess, is the next step virtual reality so you literally can experience these spaces that you’ve reconstructed? Right now, you look at it on the screen, right? And you can kind of move around it. But is the next step putting on a pair of goggles and walking through it?

[JS] There’s an app for that and we have done that!

[NR] And you have?

[JS] Yes, with the Belvoir stone quarter. And so when we had the big reveal of what this look like because we went ahead and we played it to the descendant community and they watched it. And then we, basically, threw on a pair of goggles onto them and they were like, “Woah.” And they are looking all around, trying to figure where they’re at. They were playing with it. So it was really – they were literally able to walk through that space.

[NR] That’s pretty cool.

[JS] It made it more real.

[NR] Any more of that coming in the future that we should be looking for?

[JS] Whenever there’s a chance to reconstruct what we’ve learned from archaeology and there’s a budget for it, we will definitely use that medium for that. We have also just recently done the same thing at the Bush Tavern in Harford County along MD-7. We’re working there as an outreach project and the Bush Tavern was supposed to be near where Rochambeau camp is manned there in 1781. And so, we went ahead and looked at the backyard and we end up finding this stone – the building that used to be there! And then a well, and a little stone building. And so what we did is we looked at the evolution of the Bush Tavern over time and were able to reconstruct it. And this animation goes from the 1760s, 1770s and then it goes on all the way through to the modern time period, where you have it as a doctors office today. So it really allows you to see the evolution of the Bush Tavern over time.

[NR] And so, these kinds of projects, do these fall under “these are happening because they’re public research” or “they’re happening because they’re triggered by a project” or it just depends?

[JS] Well, this one is kind of both because we do have a intersection alignment happening at that location. But we also did it and were kind of pulled into that location because we do have an opportunity to do public outreach. So, this was kind of both.

[NR] And what’s it like working, I think people listening to this think – I mean a lot of people in their mind particularly maybe members of the preservation community for good or for bad, think highway administration and they’re like “Ugh.” These are the people who are just plowing through things and knocking things over – is it challenging? I mean, do you and the highways engineers butt heads over a thing when you want to avoid and they just want to out loud just dig it up and mitigate it? Or do you feel like now it has become sort of an ingrained part of the process? I mean, is Cultural Resources respected in a way that might surprise people who aren’t familiar with the interworkings of an agency?

[JS] Yeah. I think that’s a really good question is that how do we balance things? I mean, we went to school, we have our doctoral degrees and our graduate degrees, and we’re put in this construction agency, and how do we dance with that challenge? And interesting thing is that in Maryland, specifically – and I know it’s different across different locations because I did come from the Wild West – is that in Maryland we do have a really awesome state highway administration who is able to balance this need for safe highway systems and efficient highway systems with cultural resources. So when – unfortunately, they’re not always in a situation where we can preserve.

[NR] Right. [crosstalk] And you can’t save everything.

[JS] And especially – no, you can’t save everything and nor should you. Not everything is to be saved. But I will say that we have a great group of people and we have the Maryland Historical Trust, who we work closely with, and I would say 99.9 percent of the time we’re on the same page with each other. And if we need to consider something or work on something differently, they’re there to advise. If we have a struggle, we get into a group, we try to figure out what’s the best for the cultural resource issue at hand. And the great thing is – and don’t tell them this, the engineers but – you almost have this advantage because you’re the expert and they need to rely on you so, they give you – they trust you. And the administrators trust us to get out there and to figure out whats best. Because there are some situations where you can be too much of a preservationist in highway administration but then you have to be careful you don’t go too much the other way. So where is that balance?

[NR] Right, because advocates like Preservation Maryland are watching.

[JS] Yes, that’s right [laughter]. So yeah –

[NR] That’s really interesting. So it really is a big balancing act, I mean that’s a lot of what’s going on out there.

[JS] Yeah, it is a balancing act but the thing is, is that, especially for archaeological sites, is that there’s kind of a little bit if the historic building 1960s, 1970s-moved firms that infiltrated the archaeology research and so I see a lot of times people think that digging up an archaeological site – even for research- is a bad thing and it’s not because that’s where the data is. The value of most of these archaeological sites is in the excavation of that resource. And I’ll tell you this, is that someone who does sit right next to engineers and construction, you don’t know when that private property is going to be really threatened, I guess.

[NR] Right. Oh, I see what you’re saying. When you have a chance to get that info, you lean on the side of get it. Because there are archaeologists out there who would say “No, don’t disturb it. You’re destroying the record if you do that,” right?

[JS] Yeah, and I completely disagree. It’s that, if you have a chance –

[NR] We’ll have to get someone on who can debate you next time.

[JS] You have to, I will go. [laughter] But the thing is that there is definitely – when you have an archaeological site and you have a budget to excavate it properly and to get it out to the public and it’s in private property, particularly, you need to take that chance and get that data. Now there are situations where you should preserve and you have a lot of sites that are in great situations but –

[NR] Right and you always leave a little bit, you’re not taking a hundred percent out of all of it.

[JS] No, no! You never go ahead mine an entire site. You definitely leave a little bit behind because you go to a point in every archaeological site where you get redundant data. Where the more you dig is you’re not learning anything else. So as long as you can get the location of the site, you can get some information about what it was, the date of it, what the function was, and a little bit of personal history, you’re done. You don’t to need to excavate the entire thing.

[NR] Maybe you just made me stop and think for a second. You talk about 1960’s and 70’s, a lot of what we’ve been talking about is – in the true historical record – the camps of Rochambeau, and the Donner Party, and General’s Highway and slave quarters; these are things that in peoples minds are distinctly historic, right? But the broader preservation community, not just the archaeology side, but the built environment side has been focusing a lot as of late onto the mid-century modern resources. Resources from a more recent past. Are you beginning to look at those things? I mean, where does sort of like, highway architecture of the 60’s fall into this? Is it categorically excluded? Are there are things that when you say “Well, you know that thing was pretty cool! Built in ’64,” and everyone just looks at you like, “You’re crazy.” or is there beginning to be a little bit of appreciation for that? Where’s mid-century modern in State Highway Administration?

[JS] I’m laughing in my mind because one of my laments is at State Highway [Administration] is that all of our historians love the mid-twentieth century stuff. They love it. They love the research, love that you can get really behind the information that was there just fifty years ago. And I’m thinking to myself, “Wow, that’s really not that long ago.” But they love it! And so, there’s really this respect and it’s, again, having that law on the book. Our engineers, our administrators, they all look to us and they say “What do we need to do?” and we’re like “This is what we need to do. This is the process.” So there is a love, believe it or not, for these 1960’s, 1970’s Brady Bunch-type houses and subdivisions.

[NR] And are you guys working to put any of that on the Register? I mean, have there been sort of mid-century modern resources that you’re documenting in that sense?

[JS] Absolutely! If we go into – say we have a highway and it’s going right along a subdivision from the 1950’s, 1960’s and no one’s documented that or looked at them, we’ll go through and consider that as a district. We’ll look at it as individual resources as well. And they’ll get documented, whether it’s on a short form – that say that we looked at it, this is what we think – or if it’s actually eligible.

[NR] Any mid-century modern archaeology yet? [laughter]

[JS] Well, that’s the thing. World War II is a big thing. But then when she get into the Elvis years, and the Beatles –

[NR] Is that a historic period?

[JS] Well, yeah. It kind of is [laughter]. And so when you get into the mid-twentieth century, the archaeology stops informing you as much because you really get this influx of the written record, right? So, it’s still out there and it can still-

[NR] You can do it.

[JS] – you can do it and it can inform you. But I think the value –

[NR] Is just not as necessary?

[JS] Yeah. Archaeology can’t always come to the rescue. And you don’t always – it’s not always a data store sets. Again, if you can go ahead and learn something through documentation, through other resources, rather than digging something, then there’s no reason to dig.

[NR] Right. So if people want to learn more about the work that your folks in the Cultural Resources Division and broadly State Highway Administration are doing, how do they find out more about you and find out more about the public programs and things that you’re talking about?

[JS] Every time there’s something interesting in archaeology in Maryland, I keep a Facebook page known as Maryland Archaeology, and that’s archaeology with an ‘a’, so a-r-c-h-a-e-o-l-o-g-y. We also have a – we call it the Cultural Resources Bulletin or the CRaB.

[NR] Th CRaB?

[JS] The CRaB.

[NR] We all waited with bated breath for the CRaB.

[JS] You guys love the CRaB? That’s awesome!

[NR] We love the CRaB.

[JS] So the CRaB is really a great place to read about both architectural history, projects that we’re doing as well as archaeology, and so, you can ahead and send me an e-mail at jschablitsky@sha.state.md.us.

[NR] We will put that e-mail in the show information so you can just click on that link.

[JS] And I will put you on the CRaB mailing list.

[NR] Cool! And before we let you go, we ask everyone this question. It tends to be the most difficult question, which is why we wait to ask it last. Favorite historic building, site, place, what would it be?

[JS] Does it have to be in Maryland?

[NR] No.

[JS] Okay, awesome. So this is easy. It is Amosfield in Scotland, and I’ll tell you why. This is a medieval, post-medieval tower house and right next to it is a large manor house from the mid-1600s. And we have been able to work a deal where I take several of my closest archaeological friends and we’re funded through the University of Oregon to go out and excavate around this tower house.

[NR] That’s a good deal.

[JS] That’s a really good deal, and it started with a great funder. But now, we’re in a situation where we need more funding to fund our trip over to Scotland but it’s only a mere $10,000 because we usually pay for our own airfare. But the beauty of it is that when you’re able to wake up in this 300-year old bed with a horsehair matress –

[NR] So you stay at the house?

[JS] I stay at the manor house, yes. That’s part of the deal, too, is that they at least give you the lodging –

[NR] The deal keeps getting better and better!

[JS] I know! And so you’re waking up in this bed, you get up, you grab your cup of coffee not your tea, and you look out these windows, which are all wavy, and in the distance you can see the tower house where you’re gonna be digging at that morning. And you go out to it and you’re looking for the mottled feature. From this mottled feature, there coins from the time of Mary, Queen of Scots. So it’s this very beautiful, romantic place. And then in your lunch break, you take a stroll in the attached formal garden where there’s poppies blooming and lilies, and it’s heaven.

[NR] That sounds perfect. Good answer. Well, it’s been a pleasure to have you here with us today. Thank you for all of the fantastic work that you’re doing on behalf of the people of Maryland here. It’s good to know we have someone like you safeguarding and watching over our resources that are being impacted by the state highway, so thank you, Julie.

[JS] Thank you for having me.

Credits

You don’t need to open a history book to find us. Available online from iTunes and their Google Play Store as well as our website: PresMD.org. This is PreserveCast.

This podcast was developed under a grant from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, a unit of the National Park Service. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Preservation Maryland and the Maryland Milestones Heritage Area and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the National Park Service or the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training.

This week’s episode was produced and engineered by Stephen Israel. Our executive producer is Aaron Marcavitch. Our theme music is performed by the band Pretty Gritty. You can learn more about them at their website: PrettyGrittyMusic.com, on Facebook, or on Twitter @PG_PrettyGritty.

To learn about Preservation Maryland or this week’s guests, visit: PreservationMaryland.org. While there, you can check out our blog and learn about what’s current in historic preservation. We’re also on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, and Twitter @PreservationMD. And of course, a very special thank you to our listeners. Keep preserving!