LABOR ARCHEOLOGY OF THE INDUSTRIAL ERA 

Identifying and Evaluating Nationally Significant Archeological Sites of Labor 

in the Industrial Era in the United States 

A National Historic Landmarks Theme Study 

Prepared by: 

Contributing Authors: 

Adam Fracchia 

Michael Roller 

Produced by: 

Editor: 

Erika Martin Seibert 

National Historic Landmarks Program 

May 2015 
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National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation 

Form

This form is used for documenting property groups relating to one or several historic contexts. See instructions in National Register 

Bulletin How to Complete the Multiple Property Documentation Form (formerly 16B). Complete each item by entering the requested 

information. For additional space, use continuation sheets (Form 10-900-a). Use a typewriter, word processor, or computer to 

complete all items 

 X New Submission Amended Submission 

A. Name of Multiple Property Listing

Labor Archeology of the Industrial Era Theme Study 

B. Associated Historic Contexts

(Name each associated historic context, identifying theme, geographical area, and chronological period for each.)

C. Form Prepared by

name/title Adam Fracchia, Michael Roller 

Organization University of Maryland, College Park date July 25, 2014 

street & number 1111 Woods Hall, University of Maryland telephone 301-405-1423 

city or town College Park state MD zip code 20742 

e-mail fracchia@umd.edu 

D. Certification 

I hereby certify that this multiple property documentation form has been approved by the National Register as a basis for evaluating 

related properties for listing in the National Register. 

 

Signature of the Keeper Date of Action 

Paperwork Reduction Act Statement: This information is being collected for applications to the National Register of Historic 

Places to nominate properties for listing or determine eligibility for listing, to list properties, and to amend existing listings. Response 

to this request is required to obtain a benefit in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended (16 U.S.C.460 

et seq.). 

Estimated Burden Statement: Public reporting burden for this form is estimated to average 18 hours per response including time 

for reviewing instructions, gathering and maintaining data, and completing and reviewing the form. Direct comments regarding this 

burden estimate or any aspect of this form to the Chief, Administrative Services Division, National Park Service, PO Box 37127,

Washington, DC 20013-7127; and the Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reductions Project (1024-0018), Washington, 

DC 20503. 

 

Name of Multiple Property Listing State 

 

 
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Table of Contents for Written Narrative

Provide the following information on continuation sheets. Cite the letter and title before each section of the narrative. Assign page 

numbers according to the instructions for continuation sheets in National Register Bulletin How to Complete the Multiple Property 

Documentation Form (formerly 16B). Fill in page numbers for each section in the space below. 

Page Numbers

E. Statement of Historic Contexts...........................................................................4

Introduction...........................................................................................5

 Labor History, Industrial Archeology, and Labor Archeology ...........................................7

Traditional Labor History.............................................................................7

New Labor History.....................................................................................8

Industrial Archeology..................................................................................9

Labor Archeology..........................................................................10

Research Domains and Historic Contexts.......................................................11

Labor Processes.............................................................................12

 Labor and the Colonial Era......................................................12 

Industrial Labor ....................................................................14

Labor and Identity..........................................................................17

Race and Ethnicity.................................................................18

Labor and Gender..................................................................23

Labor, Class, and Conflict.................................................................29

Communities and Collectives.............................................................33

F. Associated Property Types..............................................................................36

Property Types as Categories.....................................................................36 

Worker Housing.......................................................................................38

Social and Commercial Sites........................................................................41

Institutional Sites......................................................................................42

Industrial Worksites.........................................................................43

Infrastructure Sites....................................................................................43

Property type Summary..............................................................................44

Research Questions..........................................................................................................45

Labor Processes.............................................................................48

Research Questions................................................................52

Labor and Identity...........................................................................53

Research Questions................................................................56

Labor, Class, and Conflict.................................................................57

Research Questions................................................................60

Communities and Collectives.............................................................62

Research Questions................................................................65

Evaluation Criteria.......................................................................................................66

 National Historic Landmark Exceptions................................................68

Evaluation Standards: NRHP Criteria...................................................70

Evaluating Properties for Inclusion as NHLs of Labor Archeology.................71

G. Geographical Data ...................................................................................................................72 

H. Summary of Identification and Evaluation Methods................................................................72

Evaluation Methods and Examples.......................................................................72

 A Sample of Potential National Historic Landmarks ...........................................75

 Lowell, Massachusetts...............................................................................76
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Table of Contents for Written Narrative

Page Number

Sloss Furnace, Birmingham.......................................................................78

Fayette, Michigan......................................................................................79

 Chinese Mining Camp, Idaho...................................................80

Chinese Camp, California..........................................................................81

Buxton Townsite, Iowa..............................................................................82

 Hope Mills, North Carolina.......................................................................83

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia....................................................................84

Sunrise City, Alaska..................................................................................85

Thurber, Texas...........................................................................................86

Current National Historic Landmarks of Labor Archeology................................87

Ludlow Tent Colony, Colorado................................................................87

I. Major Bibliographical References.............................................................................................91

Appendix A: Potential NHL Sites.........................................................................109

 Appendix B: Survey of NR and NHL Sites.............................................................114 

Appendix C: Applicable Multiple Property Submissions..............................................126

E. Statement of Historic Contexts 

In 1991 Congress directed the National Park Service to undertake a theme study on American 

Labor History (PL 102-101). The Labor History Theme Study (Arnesen et al. 2003) identified a 

number of potential National Historic Landmarks (NHLs); however, archeological properties 

were not explicitly considered in the research carried out for that theme study. To address this 

omission, a Multiple Property Submission (MPS) cover document on labor archeology was 

begun in 1997 and has undergone several revisions by several different authors since that time.i 

The theme study on labor archeology works in conjunction with the Labor History Theme Study; 

however, the Labor Archeology Theme Study is not an addendum to the labor history. 

Archeology can offer different research avenues and insights to the study of labor in the 

industrial era. 

The last few centuries, starting in the 1790s with the beginning of the industrial period to the 

continuance of industrial production in the present, are specifically addressed here. Preindustrial labor is discussed briefly only to provide a context for comparison and show changes 

brought about with industrial labor. A context for labor archeology that addresses work-related 

 

i

 Theresa Solury and David Gadsby prepared earlier drafts of this document. The Labor Archeology of the Industrial 

Era theme study builds on their earlier work. This theme study also draws from the format and language of other 

theme studies, especially The Earliest Americans Theme Study. 
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sites prior to and during European colonization and settlement remains to be written and is 

beyond the purview of this study. As summarized in Section H, the survey for potential labor 

archeology NHLs largely has been restricted to existing National Register of Historic Places 

(NRHP) and NHL properties. Lists of the properties recommended and assessed as well as 

applicable MPS cover documents are included in the appendices. Other archeological properties 

that meet the Criteria for NHL designation exist but have not been evaluated. 

This MPS Theme Study will serve as a concise reference for context, research design, and 

examples of properties related to the archeology of labor history or labor archeology of the 

industrial era and can be used to assist in the identification, evaluation, and documentation of 

archeological properties for designation as NHLs as well as listings in the NRHP. The research 

on the context section consulted a wide variety of resources such as site reports from around the 

country (e.g., Adams et al. 1981; Hardesty et al. 1994) and texts on work culture (e.g., Gutman 

1976; Nash 1979, 1989). These resources provided theoretical concepts on work and work 

cultures as well as comparable data on work sites throughout the nation. Major research 

domains were derived from this research to illustrate possible ways of reviewing and assessing 

archeological properties with labor significance. When coupled with the applicable domains, the 

National Park Service's Thematic Framework (National Park Service [NPS] 1996) illustrates 

relevant research questions that should guide assessments of potential NHL and NHRP 

eligibility. 

Introduction 

Labor, or at least work, pervades the daily life of all people. Labor concerns the production of 

goods or commodities within the industrial system and the reproduction of the human and 

material resources necessary for industry. Workers under the industrial arrangement, as defined 

in this study, are people who sell their own labor power in order to make a living, but have 

limited control over the conditions under which they exercise that power. This particular 

dynamic, characterized by social relations interconnected with the commodification of work, 

deeply affected the lives, practices, and identities of all Americans. 
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This theme study is meant to provide a basic framework for the nomination of archeological sites 

that are nationally significant for their ability to yield or are likely to yield information of major 

scientific importance about labor within the context of the industrial period of United States 

history beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing into the present. National 

Historic Landmark Criteria reflect a rigorous evaluative framework appropriate for properties 

possessing the potential to contain information of the highest level of national significance. 

NHLs designated under the Labor Archeology Theme Study must be acknowledged to be among 

the nation’s most significant properties associated with the context of workers and worker’s lives 

as situated within the context of industrial labor systems. To be applicable, the relevant aspects 

of a property must have occurred between the late eighteenth century and the present, or 

specifically present a unique or early example of the work cultures that would later accompany 

changes in industrial production. Furthermore, the properties must be located within the United 

States and its territories and possessions. 

Labor archeology properties for the NHL program are nationally significant sites where workers 

extracted resources for industrial production, sites where workers processed and distributed 

those resources, and places and structures associated with industry. Because the relationships 

that labor produces are understood to pervade all social forms, the homes of men, women, and 

children who performed, and in some cases continue to perform, these forms of labor and their 

communities are also relevant to this study. Thus, data on labor archeology may be found at any 

property whose major contributing features are associated with industrial labor. These properties 

may include a range of different industrial sites from factories, workshops, and wharves to 

canals, tenements, and union halls. The individual merits of each property, such as site integrity, 

uniqueness, and ability to answer research questions of national importance (see Section F for 

property types, NHL and NHRP Criteria, and proposed research questions) play a significant 

role in determining whether properties are appropriate within the context of this theme study 

The study does exclude properties where enslaved labor was the primary mode of work, because 

plantation and industrial slavery sites constitute a body of archeological work so large and 

important as to require separate treatment. Likewise, pre-industrial labor is not discussed though 

the general transition to industrial labor is highlighted with a brief discussion of sites during this 
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period to provide a historical context of the changes that accompanied this transition. 

Labor History, Industrial Archeology, and Labor Archeology 

The study of labor and industrial labor are represented by the fields of labor history, labor 

archeology, and industrial archeology. A brief discussion of the field of labor archeology 

illustrates its theoretical foundations along with some current trends in theory and practice. 

Following this brief section on the history of labor studies and the increasing interrelation of 

these fields is a brief historic overview of labor systems, work practices, and work cultures in the 

United States from the beginning of industrialization to recent times organized around four 

major research domains. While this section does not constitute a thorough examination or 

description of all aspects of American labor history or labor archeology, the theme study in 

general is intended to serve as a framework for evaluating the national significance of the 

archeology of labor sites and offer a sample of nationally and potentially nationally significant 

resources in the United States and provide enough context for such an evaluation. 

Traditional Labor History 

Labor history is usually divided into two primary schools of thought: traditional, movementbased labor history and the “new” labor history. Traditional labor history in the United States is 

grounded in economic history and traces its roots to John R. Commons’ Wisconsin School and 

George E. Barnett’s students at Johns Hopkins University (Brody 1993:6). This tradition 

approaches the study of labor as a study of trade unionism and collective bargaining (Brody 

1979:111). Studies by these labor historians tend to focus on the institutional aspects of work, 

such as union history and development (Brody 1985:27; Morris 1985:21). This traditional 

approach “adopted a grand narrative form in which heroic workers and their unions marched, 

bent but not bowed, toward a better future, culminating in the New Deal and federal labor law 

reforms” (Arnesen et al. 2003:3). 

Changing theoretical approaches and analytical methods in labor history in the 1960s and 1970s 

prompted some scholars to expand labor history’s research areas. While studies by early labor 

historians are excellent accounts of the development of the labor movement as a united entity, 

they provide little information on the behavior and reasoning of workers and employers (Brody 
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1979:112). For this reason, many later labor historians began to shift away from traditional labor 

history and toward the study of working-class culture and movements. 

New Labor History 

During the 1970s, many scholars, following in the groundbreaking footsteps of British historian 

E.P. Thompson (1966), shifted their focus of study away from protests and institutions to 

examine the worker as an individual, not an aggregate (e.g., Dubofsky and Van Tine 1986; 

Gutman 1976; Montgomery 1979:6). Thompson’s work examined the ways workers came to 

view themselves as a group. Subsequent works of the “new” labor history have moved toward 

the experiences of workers and away from the events acting on workers (Brody 1979:114). This 

more recent turn toward social history has produced analytical studies in addition to the 

descriptive studies conducted by traditional labor historians (Morris 1985:23). Ethnic histories, 

labor mobility, communication, community studies, worker experiences, urban histories, women 

and minority studies, and political behavior are all common avenues of investigation for “new” 

labor historians (Brody 1979:115-117). More recently, “movement historians” such as James 

Green (2000) have begun to use worker heritage as an organizing tool while others (Roediger 

1999) have examined the intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender with worker’s identity. 

The contemporary field of labor history is built upon a scholarly heritage that includes not only a 

particularistic history of the labor movement, but also an increasingly sophisticated use of social 

theory. While a clear distinction between both styles of labor history is apparent, it is not 

necessary that these two styles be considered fully separate. This theme study proposes that 

traditional and “new” labor histories need not be mutually exclusive. 

The study of labor’s history has also received scholarly contribution from many other 

disciplines. Contemporaries of the new labor historians, historical anthropologists such as Eric 

Wolf (1982) and Sidney Mintz (1974), began to explore the consequences of increasingly 

globalized trade and industrial labor and their effects on indigenous people. Other 

anthropologists (Wallace 1978) studied the formation of industrial communities as well as the 

experiences of women in the labor force (Di Leonardo 1985; Lamphere 1985) and the impacts of 

neoliberal labor regimes on women around the world (Ong 2006). Together, the different 
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research questions posed by labor history and related fields present a fuller conceptualization of 

labor history and offer a range of avenues from which to study its many manifestations and 

implications for the present. 

Industrial Archeology 

The historical archeology of industrial sites represents an independent discipline with an 

intellectual genealogy separate from labor history. The first archeologists to study labor 

explicitly did so within the context of an archeological subfield known as industrial archeology, 

a term coined in 1955 by British archeologist Michael Rix (Rix 1955; Symonds 2005:37). 

Industrial archeologists studied the material remains of the industrial revolution and industrial 

era (Foley 1968:66; Hudson 1966, 1979). The motivation of these preservationists was initially 

to document the extant remains of the industrial revolution from the vantage point of postindustrial economies. Beginning in the late 1950s and 1960s, industrial archeologists began a 

project dedicated to recording the physical structures of work places through the examination of 

factory designs, layouts, and technology systems; a material history of technology and work 

processes (Hudson 1979). In the United States, industrial archeologists documented features 

such as factories, mills, foundries, bridges, railways, kilns, and mines. 

The advent of the discipline was significant as it encouraged archeologists, for the first time, to 

study fairly recent, standing, and very visible structures, creating an archeological and historical 

record for a quickly disappearing and under-researched set of resources and applying 

archeological methods and theories to extant structures (Vogel 1969:90-91). Industrial 

archeology places primacy on material and technological developments rather than work-related 

issues and culture. Because the traditional concern of industrial archeology is the creation of a 

thorough record of the structure and layout of industrial buildings, space, and technology, it 

offered little information on the social lives of workers or their experiences of the emergence of 

the industrial system of labor. In historical archeology, there has been a call to include labor, not 

only in the context of industrial or work-related sites, but in all sites that reflect the daily lives of 

workers and their families (Shackel 2009). Through this work, it is now accepted that the 

changes in technology, work processes, and social relations that came along with the industrial 

era have significantly affected the identities, environmental and health conditions, social 
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relationships, and other aspects of the lives of workers and their families. 

Labor Archeology 

In recent decades, historical archeologists have begun to examine sites associated with industrial 

workers and their labor from an anthropological perspective (such as Adams et al. 1981; 

Nassaney and Abell 2000; Shackel 1994). American labor archeology, which has intellectual 

roots in North American anthropological archeology rather than British or American industrial 

archeology or the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), expands some of the scope of 

industrial archeology to include pre-industrial and modern society. In keeping with the “new” 

labor history, American labor archeology also focuses on the factors that have affected the 

experiences and social relations of workers beginning in the late eighteenth century with the 

onset of industrial systems of labor. In recent years many archaeologists have begun to examine 

daily life and labor in the United States (Beaudry and Mrozowski 1989c; Brashler 1991; Camp 

2011; Costello 1998; Shackel 1996, 2000; Van Bueren 2002b; Walker 2008a; Wegars 1991; 

Wood 2002a; Workman et al. 1994). 

Another factor that distinguishes labor archeology from industrial archeology is the introduction 

of more varied issue-based studies. Gender, racialization and ethnic studies (Voss 2005) are 

three such areas of research currently expanding in the archeological field (for example see 

Beaudry and Mrozowski 1989b; Orser 2007; Schuyler 1980; Scott 1994). Although more 

comparative work needs to be done between sites and the individual histories of workers and 

communities in order to develop a nuanced understanding of broader patterns of labor 

organization, movements, and industrial labor, attention to identity and everyday experiences 

allows archeologists to understand how workers negotiated social, political, and economic 

contexts on a daily basis. 

Practitioners of industrial archeology and labor archeology have formulated different sets of 

research questions and may hold divergent goals; however, each approach addresses important 

facets of industrial labor’s past. Both Eleanor Casella (2005:3) and James Symonds (2005) note 

that since the 1990s, industrial archeologists have increasingly engaged with social theory, 

which has expanded their focus beyond their particularist roots. For instance, Ian Mellor (2005) 
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applies network theory to cotton textile mill designs to understand how the buildings conditioned 

workers’ behavior, especially their communication habits. Ray Riley (2005) has also noted that 

industrial archeologists must consider their sites as parts of larger regional and global systems. 

When taken together, the archeology of industrial sites and the social archeology of labor 

possess the potential to form a holistic view of work processes, patterns, and experiences. 

Labor archeology, itself, presents a different approach than that found in other disciplines. First, 

labor archeology is an important way to learn about a group of people who, for a variety of 

reasons, seldom left historical records of their own lives (Gordon and Malone 1994:13-16). 

Second, the material culture of industrial labor also affords archeologists the ability to address 

different research questions than might be found in the field of labor history. Additionally, 

within the discipline of historical archeology, methodologies that promote public engagement in 

explorations of heritage have developed as a major goal of archeological research in recent years 

(Little 2007; Shackel and Little 2007). Labor, as a practice that permeates social life in the past 

as much as the present and that is intrinsically connected to important broad social questions 

about identities, practices, politics and economy, is a topic that can serve as a touchstone for a 

shared exploration of past and present (Shackel 2004, 2009). This focus is certainly the case in 

terms of difficult, neglected, or forgotten aspects of American history. For instance, labor 

history has been promoted as a way for contemporary workers to develop and explore their 

unique heritage and to promote equity and fairness in the context of present social changes 

(Green 2000). The Ludlow project is one example of this sort of participatory methodology 

applied in the context of labor archeology (Ludlow Collective 2001; Saitta 2007; Wood 2002b). 

The project examined the development of class solidarity amongst the participants of the 

Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914 using a collaborative approach that engaged the presentday labor movement in a neighboring community. 

Research Domains and Historic Contexts in Labor Archeology of the Industrial Era 

The history of labor in the industrial era represents a large area of research and a long time span 

for the field of archeology. The Labor Archeology of the Industrial Era theme study uses four 

research domains to provide a grouping of research questions to focus on regionally and 
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nationally important aspects of the industrial era of archeological properties. In Section F, these 

domains are also linked to applicable property types, research questions, and the appropriate 

Thematic Framework themes and topics. A thorough chronological history of labor in the 

industrial era is not included in this document as the Labor History Theme Study has already 

detailed such a history. The following section details the four domains, their context, and the 

information they can provide. While these trends are discussed separately in an effort to 

highlight specific research questions, these domains are intricately interconnected and attention 

should be paid to the dynamics of this interrelation. 

Labor Processes 

The industrial era was characterized by a shift in work and work relations which came to impact 

almost all aspects of social life. Beginning in England in the second half of the eighteenth 

century, mercantilism began to give way to a new mode of production, spurred by the investment 

of capital and inventions which led to predominance of machine production (Wolf 1982:266). 

This transition to industrial capitalism entailed a new way of life that was painfully 

institutionalized over time (Gutman 1987:71). Since changes in labor processes of the industrial 

era affected life both in and outside of the workplace, labor archeology of the industrial era 

directs its questions to archeological contexts of both work and everyday life. 

Labor and the Colonial Era 

Although the colonial labor system is not covered in this theme study, a brief consideration of 

pre-industrial labor helps to frame the context for industrial labor and the changes that occurred 

during this transition. The colonial period in the United States and elsewhere saw the 

introduction of new labor systems and the adaptation of traditional systems to new 

environments. European settlers constructed farms, workshops, and stores in the colonies but 

continuing labor shortages inhibited the development of a mature economy. In order to address 

labor shortages, colonists and colonial governments enslaved native populations or imported 

slaves, servants, and indentured servants (Boris and Lichtenstein 1991:33). 

During this period prior to the industrial era, individual craftspeople, artisans, and their families 

produced most commodities in a system known as the artisan system of labor. This system of 
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labor was characterized by small-scale production, local markets, and skilled craftsmanship with 

work centered around the home or the community. Homes often served as the earliest 

production centers. Artisans generally owned the tools and materials necessary to ply their trade 

and had a great deal of control over the hours and conditions of their labor. Men, and to a 

smaller degree, women produced or processed goods on a limited scale as skilled craftsmen, 

sometimes taking on apprentices or assistants who exchanged their labor for craft training, and 

room and board (Arnesen et al. 2003). Most craft and artisan production thus was done by 

independent producers, sometimes aided by family members, apprentices, journeymen, or others 

(Gordon et al. 1982:54-55). 

Early agricultural operations were centered around farm units with little distinction between 

home and field. Households performed farm work year round, and family members provided the 

primary source of labor. As the colonies became more established, merchant-farmers developed 

larger plantations to produce goods on a greater commercial scale. Such operations required a 

large and inexpensive labor force and often relied upon unfree labor—enslaved workers and 

indentured servants—as well as tenants, settled yeomen, migrants, women, and children 

(Arnesen et al. 2003; Gibb and King 1991). Archeologists like Mark Groover (2008) have 

examined the evolution and impact of changes to agricultural operations. Groover (2008) 

identified the material signature of changes to farm practices and the switch to commercial 

farming from the colonial period to the present documenting the changes to rural households and 

social life. 

Colonial Era work practices, including varieties of enslaved, coerced, and indebted labor as well 

as artisan or craft-based systems, set the stage for a new economic system beginning in the late 

eighteenth century and intensifying in the middle of the nineteenth century. While this transition 

followed regional variations, it is well accepted that an overall change in many aspects of the 

economy, including the social relationships between labor and capital, were widespread by this 

time. 
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Industrial Labor 

The transition from the artisan system to the factory system unfolded gradually in the United 

States. This movement relates to other major themes of the period: changing conditions and 

hours of labor, formation of a factory culture, and transformative technological developments, all 

of which affected workers’ attitudes, lifestyles, and health. Generally, the artisan system 

dominated from the 1700s to the 1860s, though factory discipline began to be implemented in 

the first quarter of the nineteenth century (Boris and Lichtenstein 1991:84-85). Textile mills, 

which required large equipment and water-power, appear to have adopted the factory system 

earliest. For instance, Samuel Slater, a British textile entrepreneur, opened his mill in 

Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793, employing entire families in the work process. Slater’s system 

included a system of tenant farms around the mills to house the working families (Gordon and 

Malone 1994; Shackel 2009:24-25). Likewise, the Union Manufacturing Company in Oella, 

Maryland began production shortly after 1808 (Clendenning 1992:251-252). 

The introduction of the industrial system, which often shifted production from the home to a 

separate manufacturing site, meant that workers lost power over their tools and equipment and 

lost the ability to set their own prices or sell their own goods. Instead, industrial workers sold 

their labor-power at prices set by factory owners. In this system, labor was coordinated under a 

single technical system, often under the same roof. This system involved minimizing the 

importance of craft skills on the part of laborers as compared to that of the artisan system and an 

emphasis on the techniques of labor and time discipline. The new mode of manufacture saw the 

cheapening and regularization as well as the consolidation of control over labor regimes (Gordon 

et al. 1982:58). Work and social life became disciplined to synchronize with the repetitive and 

rhythmic operations of increasingly mechanized processes. Mechanization increasingly 

displaced skilled labor. Machines also meant the loss of ability to sell acquired skills at the same 

rate of remuneration as prior to the introduction of the machine (Barnett 1926:117). Still, the 

process of deskilling the labor force was gradual and uneven across the different industries 

(Leary 1986:38). On the whole, from the late eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, 

labor conditions generally deteriorated in the United States (Kuczynski 1973:33). 
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The United States saw significant changes including increasing industrialization during the 

period from 1826 to 1861. The population of the United States in 1826 is estimated to have been 

around 11,000,000; it tripled to 33,000,000 by time of the Civil War (Smith 1981:xi). The 

magnitude of everything from railroads and immigration to farm production increased (Smith 

1981:xi). During this period, wage labor became the dominant manner of organizing production 

and economic affairs passed from the community as a whole to a special class (Gordon et al. 

1982:3; Ware 1964:xi). Although the nation was still agrarian and half or more of adults were 

self-employed by the end of the Civil War, the nation was quickly transitioning to a country 

where the majority of individuals worked for employers (Dubofsky 1996:2-3). 

By the late nineteenth century the wage-labor relationship between employers and workers 

expanded and the United States can be said to have become a fully industrialized nation. From 

the 1870s until the beginning of the Second World War, a shift occurred in the organization of 

work and the structure of labor markets with more jobs reduced to common, semi-skilled labor 

and control of the labor process concentrated among foreman and their employers (Gordon et al. 

1982:3). The Gilded Age, representing the beginning of this period, also saw the growth of 

middle-class professions like engineers and managers. At the same time, capital and production 

became increasingly concentrated (Beaud 1983:117; Kuczynski 1973:124). 

This rapid industrialization was marked by shifts in industry and industrial practices. Around the 

turn of the century, science and efficiency, such as extolled by Frederick Taylor, led the drive for 

order and control in the workplace. Taylor was a champion of the scientific management of 

work, whereby scientific observations and methods were applied to the work process and labor 

relations (Dulles 1960:255-256; Montgomery 1987). Mechanization and centralization 

continued into the twentieth century with technological innovation further aiding the expansion 

of the unskilled labor force (Jones 1999:156; Rodgers 1978). From the 1920s onward, 

qualitative differences in the organization of work and labor markets were produced by politicaleconomic forces (Gordon et al. 1982:3). 

Archeology can study how pre-industrial patterns of work and social life changed or were 

realigned as a result of the introduction of industrial modes of production. The evolution of 
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industrial production from the first mills to the factories run under principles of scientific 

management and the assembly line had major ramifications in everyday life and their impact 

inside and outside of the workplace can be studied. These changes and the patterning of 

everyday life for all segments of the population are observable archeologically. The work of 

Paul Shackel and others (Lucas and Shackel 1994; Moyer and Shackel 2008; Palus and Shackel 

2006; Shackel 1996) in the former industrial town of Harpers Ferry in West Virginia illustrates 

the movement from artisan to industrial systems and its effects. During the first part of the 

nineteenth century, Harpers Ferry underwent a transition from a small craft village to an 

industrial armory. This conversion was not at all times peaceful or comfortable. Shackel and his 

colleagues examined not only how technological changes affected everyday lives but also how 

they were subsequently memorialized in Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Shackel’s 1996 

work, in particular, used a variety of archeological tools to examine the culture change brought 

on by new technological regimes. Other archeologists (such as Lucas 1994) have examined the 

changing meaning of household material culture within the context of the industrial 

transformation. 

The process of transition to the discipline of the industrial order occurred in numerous craft 

production settings throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. For example, 

Bradford Botwick and Debra McClane (2005) illustrate a similar conflict between craft 

producers and industrial workers in their examination of the landscapes of two Chesapeake Bay 

fishing villages. Botwick and McClane (2005) documented how small-scale oyster tongers 

resisted the onset of new fishing methods (dredging) and set the stage for a century-long conflict 

over oysters in the Chesapeake. These changes had consequences for domestic spaces as well as 

work places. Michael Nassaney and Marjorie Abel (2000:268), investigating the effects of 

deskilling in the cutlery industry in the Connecticut Valley, concluded that through the principles 

of scientific management "nineteenth-century elites used spatial organization to reinforce their 

positions of power and authority in the emergence of industrial capitalism." Providing data, 

which documents this transition at a nationally significant level, is a qualification for sites being 

considered candidates as NHLs; a point detailed further in Section F. 

The transition to more industrialized systems of production, commerce, resource extraction, 
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commodity distribution, and agricultural production over time has increased the magnitude by 

which the environment is used and altered, and in turn, impacts people. Industry can be 

understood to include a “total system that includes raw materials, tools, operational sequences 

and skills, social and cultural knowledge, work coordination, and the historical context within 

which these parts and their interactions occur” (Hardesty and Little 2000: 97). Industrial 

processes produce entire landscapes or networks of landscapes that evolve out of the interactions 

of laborers and their families, labor processes, machines, and natural environments. In many 

cases, such as the waterpower supplying the mills in Lowell or extractive industries such as coal 

mines or quarries, local environmental resources were crucial for the success of industry and, as 

a result, often determined work locations. These processes and their demand for labor and its 

sustenance drove settlement patterns and land usage throughout the country during the industrial 

era. 

Archeologists have detailed the relationship between the environment and workers’ everyday 

lives. For instance, Stephen Mrozowski (2006) documented the transition from craft labor to 

industrial labor comparing residences and yards in Newport, Rhode Island, with residences and 

yards in Boott Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. Using pollen and parasite remains, Mrozowski 

(2006) was able to compare the quality of and the creation and maintenance of these 

environments in relation to work structures. Viewing the environment as an integral part of 

daily life instead of just as a setting allows it to be studied in connection with changing systems 

of labor and accompanying social relations. Thus, archeological sites also contain data on the 

environment and its interface with industry and people and can shed light on a number of 

research questions related to its change throughout time. For example, how were different 

industrial operations dependent on harnessing or using natural resources? What was the impact 

to the environment in this relationship? What were the primary impacts, such as water pollution 

from tanning activities, or secondary impacts, such as lead pollution from smelting operations, 

and how did they affect the quality of life of workers and nearby or distant populations? 

Labor and Identity 

Participation, coercion, or aspiration within capitalist systems of labor drew different groups of 

people together for the purpose of work. Work is conducted socially among, between, and for 
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groups of people as they are drawn into, forced under, or live within the economic systems in 

which they become dependent as both producers and as consumers. As a result, labor relations 

are nationally significant in the way divisions of race, gender, and ethnicity are created, 

amplified, or maintained within the broader context of American social history and are used to 

structure or classify the population. 

The expansion of industry in the nineteenth century required increasing amounts of labor. In the 

beginnings of the factory system, the labor requirement could be met with long hours similar to 

the working day in agriculture, initially drawing from women and children (Cohen 1979:8). 

Immigration and migration supplied the growth of industry and the construction of its 

infrastructure. Widening national markets and subsequent competition compelled manufacturers 

to seek to lower costs and reduce wages by employing cheap labor (Parmet 1981:16). This drive 

to lower costs led to social differentiation and segmentation of the workforce, pitting different 

groups against each other. As a result, conditions were created that prioritized production over 

workers’ health and safety. Processes such as enslavement, migration, itinerancy, and the 

development of ethnic, race, and class enclaves are all important aspects to the relationship 

between labor and the movement of people. Archeology can explore the nature of these social 

relations and the relationship between them and between industry through their material and 

spatial signature. 

Race and Ethnicity

The categories of race and ethnicity are socially constructed and thus historically situated in 

relation to industry. In the United States, these categories were based on what could be assigned 

as the “white race.” The process of racialization was wound around the stratification of society, 

its segmentation and social inequality (Orser 2007:10). Therefore, to understand the dynamics 

of labor and its relationship to industry, contextualizing the categorization of different peoples 

by historical definitions of race and ethnicity is essential. The relationships between groups and 

the ability for labor to organize was affected by these divisions and ideas. 

While slavery is not covered in this theme study, the use of race in the exploitation of African 

Americans deserves a brief discussion in the context of the marginalization which occurred in 
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industry even after emancipation based on this earlier racialized pattern. Slightly before and 

after the abolition of slavery, changes occurred in many minorities' roles in society and the type 

of work they performed. Following many manufacturers’ transition to the factory system of 

labor, many slave holders unsuccessfully tried to implement factory discipline on their 

plantations in the Caribbean and the mainland South (Genovese 1991:143). While many 

enslaved people remained as agricultural workers, others came to work in the factory system. 

Both Northern and Southern entrepreneurs purchased or leased slaves to work as industrial 

workers in positions such as machine tenders, mechanics, cobblers, or tanners (Shackel 2009:66-

68). Racist practices and beliefs, slave resistance, and a fluctuating economy fostered discord 

between free and enslaved African-American and White workers in the southern United States, 

enhanced by free Euro-American opposition to the new competition for wage positions. Whites 

engaged in racist practices such as “job busting” to drive African Americans away from trades in 

which they had traditionally participated (Towers 2000:221-222). Despite intergroup tension 

and societal pressures, southern entrepreneurs continued to employ slave labor at early industrial 

operations until the onset of the Civil War (Shackel 2009). 

 

After the Civil War ended, freed slaves attempted to control the conditions and scheduling of 

their work as much as possible. Freed slaves, unable to buy or find land to work, became wage 

laborers in the Reconstruction South, working on plantations, construction projects, or in 

processing and production centers. For many freed women, domestic wage labor became a 

source of income, pride and a context for developing community organization and resistance 

(Hunter 1997). But despite emancipation, the unequal treatment of African Americans persisted. 

While society offered free African Americans a measure of control over employment options 

and work conditions, employer practices and unfair government legislation plagued African 

Americans and limited their opportunity for independence and economic success (Foner 

1991:157). In later years from the 1900s to the 1930s, many freed slave families emigrated to 

the north and north central states seeking employment and economic security as wage laborers in 

major cities (Jones 1991:202-204). Though they had lived in segregated enclaves in Northern 

cities before World War II, the degree of this segregation became more intense (Gordon et al. 

1982:207). 
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The boundaries of identity and what was considered “white” for other groups also shifted over 

time. Categorization and racialization were tied to a host of differences, such as language or 

religion, and used as a means of placing them within the industrial and social order. Immigrants 

also supplied the demand for labor in industry. The later industrial era, roughly from the 1860s 

to the 1940s, saw large numbers of immigrants fleeing oppression and/or searching for work, 

enter the country. The mass of immigrants arriving with little resources around the midnineteenth century were employed directly in the wage-labor force (Gordon et al. 1982:74) and 

consumed its products. 

Immigrants often began work in the urban industrialized centers and then spread across the 

country in search of work. The waves of new labor were employed by companies to develop 

further previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited areas of the country, playing an important 

role not only in manufacturing, mineral and other natural resource extraction, but also in 

expanding infrastructure development into American hinterlands. In the West, immigrants took 

part in railroad construction, dam building, agricultural labor, timbering, mineral extraction, 

commercial fishing and processing. The nature of this work: geographically isolated, often 

temporary or seasonal and largely unskilled, resulted in occupational and domestic settings 

reflective of the transient nature of this work (Hardesty 2007; Van Bueren 2002b:1-7; Walker 

2008b). Residential differentiation of this type continued even after the end of the Second 

World War, with people living together based on common bonds such as religion, ethnicity, or 

race, in the process fostering shared dispositions and goals (Dubofsky 1994:236). 

Minority discrimination during the industrial era was widespread. Many African American 

women, for example, were unable to obtain manufacturing, processing, or sales positions due to 

racially discriminative policies (Jones 1991:208-209). As such, they had a choice between 

becoming agricultural laborers or domestic laborers. A similar discrimination in hiring practices 

existed for African American males and other minority groups. Many employers preferred to 

hire Northern and Western European and Euro-American workers over Southern European, 

Mexican, Asian, or African American workers (Boris and Lichtenstein 1991:181-184; Jones 

1991:208-209; Takaki 1991:214). Accordingly, only certain less-desirable positions, such as 

manual or agricultural labor, were open for these workers (Jones 1991:202). Employers also 
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often scaled wages for minorities so that Southern European, African American, Mexican, or 

Asian workers received less pay than fellow White workers (Jones 1991:204). Considering 

discrimination in hiring and work practices, it became especially important for minorities to 

unionize. This organization was made difficult as a result of the positions most commonly 

offered to minorities as unskilled, transient, manual, and agricultural laborers. 

Laws codified discrimination and restrictions based on racial and ethnic categories. Slavery, 

segregation, and exclusionary laws have marked the industrial period and can be related to 

industrial modes of production. For instance, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a Federal 

law to prevent male Chinese laborers from entering the country (Orser 2007:129-130). The law 

was one in a wave of legislation imposing restriction on Chinese immigration arising from fear 

of competition and interethnic tensions. Another example is the Bracero program which 

operated as a guest worker program for Mexican migratory workers in the United States from 

1942 to 1964. Immigration law and practice helped to create “a Mexican migratory agricultural 

proletariat, a racialized, transnational workforce” that had various legal statuses (Ngai 

2004:128). This policy ensured that this workforce remained separate from the American 

working class. 

Archeological scholarship has examined material culture for patterning that reflects the racial, 

racialized, or ethnic identification of laboring groups in ways that range from identities internally 

constructed to identities externally imposed (Epperson 2004; Orser 2007; Singleton and Bograd 

1995). Many studies have broadened this analysis by recognizing the role ethnicity and race 

play in combination with multiple facets of identity including nationality, gender, class, and 

sexuality (Brighton 2008; Delle et al. 2000; Franklin 1997; 2001; Mullins 1999; Scott 1994; 

Voss 2008; Wall 1994; Wilkie 2001). Archeology, informed by anthropological ideas, has been 

particularly adept at examining the ways material culture can be used to address social identities 

within a variety of conditions and social environments related to labor (Camp 2011; Duke and 

Saitta 1998; Lightfoot 2005; Mrozowski 2006; Reckner 2009; Wilkie 2001). 

Domestic arrangements in laboring towns, work camps, or industrial neighborhoods may reflect 

a particular ethnic group clustering around or dominating the labor in an industry. In other 
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cases, groups intermingled, sometimes reflecting the labor hierarchy inherent in industrial work 

processes. Elsewhere they occur in diachronic succession or accumulation, reflecting the history 

of global migration flows. Immigrant workers maintained their cultural traditions by forming 

ethnic communities that offered support and understanding for their beliefs, practices, and values 

(Boris and Lichtenstein 1991:171). 

Some domestic occupations and worksites reflect the concentrated presence of solitary ethnic 

groups employed in a single industry, blurring the thematic boundaries of sites as ethnic 

enclaves, work camps, and company towns (Schulz 1996). Patently, they demonstrate 

characteristics of all three. At the China Camp Site in the vicinity of San Rafael, California, 

Chinese immigrants occupied a small village or work camp by about 1870 amidst technological 

features associated with shrimp fishing and processing activities (Bingham 1978). 

Archeological investigations demonstrated that the occupants of the camp employed technology 

and material culture reflective of their ethnic ties, as well as consumed a diet reflective of 

Cantonese cuisine (Schulz 1996:172). Among the practitioners of the archeology of Overseas 

Chinese, a lively debate surrounds the negotiation of ethnic identities, particularly in regards to 

observance of traditional continuity in the face of broader scales of economic and political 

power, racism, and pluralism (Mullins 2008; Voss 2005; Voss and Allen 2008). 

 

In some cases, archeology reveals distinct patterns in the material conditions related to 

occupations by different groups (Little 2007:49-50). A. E. Rogge’s (1995) study of the diverse 

ethnic makeup of Arizona dam workers examines the dangers inherent in dam construction and 

the foodways and drinking habits of workers. The archeological study revealed the 

segmentation and diversity of the work crew occupying this transient work camp. His findings 

regarding Apache workers suggest that workers sometimes lived in traditional wikiups and 

altered objects to serve the needs of their traditional cultures. Other cases, such as Don 

Hardesty’s (Hardesty et al. 1994) work on Reipetown in Eastern Nevada, showed that while 

labor positions and ethnic and class divisions were divided up spatially, domestic occupations 

left no clearly discernible ethnic distinctions in the archeological record. 
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Archeology conducted at Van Winkle’s Mill in the Ozark region of Arkansas reveals dynamics 

at this site that span these changes in American history and racialized identity. Jamie Brandon 

and James Davidson’s (2005) analysis of archeology at this timber mill and industrial complex 

reveal conformity largely to a landscape model comparable to that employed at Southern 

plantations of the time. This model incorporated the use of enslaved African Americans, 

including entire family units, in labor. The operations occupied a landscape divided distinctly 

between domestic and industrial functions. A visually prominent “big house”, analogical to 

those that often held the focus of managerial functions on a Southern plantation, along with a 

raised garden, presided at the central spot uniting this landscape. Excavations revealed the 

construction of sturdier worker’s housing following the war for emancipated freedmen labor 

(Brandon 2013; Brandon and Davidson 2005). Comparing artifacts recovered from the post- and 

ante-bellum period residences illustrated startling differences, namely an increase in the types 

and amounts of personal goods. Brandon (2013:43) theorizes that the artifacts recovered from 

this period may reflect the occupants “growing engagement with consumerism” and the 

fulfillment of their new desires “through carefully considered, critically aware consumption.” 

Research at Van Winkle’s Mill synthesizes data gathered from different scales, such as the 

landscape and individual household objects, to make comparisons. As a result, it reveals 

information about changing racial and class identities across different historical contexts. 

Labor and Gender 

The conditions of labor and economy have a large and complex effect on the creation of 

gendered identities in ways observable in archeological research. Gender identities were woven 

with racial and ethnic categories. Feminist thought has inspired scholarship in archeology that 

illuminates the complex constructed nature of gender identity in social contexts (Conkey and 

Gero 1997; Conkey and Spector 1984; Scott 1994; Seifert 1991; Voss 2006). Archeologists 

have identified the manner in which contexts of work and labor play a significant role in 

defining gender as a complex cultural construction often inseparable from racialized and classbased identities. Archeologists have examined the traces of everyday practices including 

material culture, foodways, and built environments that create, transform, or defy gender 

identities in these contexts. 
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Industrial labor saw a shift in gender relationships. During the colonial period, gender played a 

significant role in the types of work performed, though both women and men shared many 

duties, including housework. Men often worked as farmers and may have chosen from a broad 

array of other professions from which to derive all or part of their incomes. The ability to earn a 

living was closely tied to masculine status, and was a condition of community membership 

(Tannenbaum 2004:2-3). Laurel Ulrich’s (1991:58-68) discussion of housewives and household 

labor during the colonial period reveals that most women worked in a restricted environment. 

Middle class and elite women often worked as household managers, and a great deal of women’s 

work focused on growing or preparing food. Most of their labor centered around the home and 

the immediate surrounding area. Their responsibilities included maintaining families and 

connected them to their communities through bargaining activities, charity activities, and the 

raising of children (Ulrich 1991:58). Housework could often involve servants and family 

members who often performed many duties (Arnesen et al. 2003). As such, it is important to 

recognize households and adjacent work properties (e.g., gardens, milkhouses, laundries) as 

essential work centers. 

Despite the relatively restricted conditions under which women worked during the colonial and 

early Federal periods, some women found opportunities to gain control of their working 

conditions. Widows often found themselves in charge of their late husband’s business, as in the 

case of Anne Catherine Green of Annapolis (Little 1994). Women also often found work as 

midwives or medics and performed such crafts as beer or cider brewing, textile processing, and 

teaching (Tannenbaum 2004:3; Ulrich 1982, 1990). Mary Blewett (1988) and Thomas Dublin 

(1979, 1993) note that women may have worked in some capacity as craftspeople, producing 

such articles as shoes and straw hats under the supervision of male craftsmen in their household, 

but this service was not publicly recognized sometimes since men tended to conduct the business 

end of the production operation such as sales. During the transition period, women initially 

continued to produce or contribute to the production of goods in this manner but industries, 

especially the textile industry, began to contract women to work on their own through a system 

known as piecework. Factory work eventually brought an increasing number of girls and 

women into the public workplace. 
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As the household-based production system of the eighteenth century was gradually replaced by 

the industrial system, women’s roles in production changed. Under the craft system, women 

maintained the household and raised children, but also spent time at home assisting their 

working husbands or male relatives produce goods (Blewett 1991:108-109). As new production 

technologies developed, many women continued to help produce goods in their homes, but in 

greater quantities and at a greater speed (Pleck 1991:16). Many of the job openings were in 

occupations that can be seen as a commercialization of women’s household roles such as 

domestic service, textiles, or serving (Montgomery 1987:136). Companies increasingly drew 

women and children out of the home and into labor centers, as they tended to be an inexpensive 

and efficient source of labor who readily took to factory discipline since few were skilled in a 

traditional craft (Dawley 1991:97; Gutman 1991:191). Though women’s work experiences 

retained many pre-industrial features including primarily a sexual division of labor, their 

removal from the home significantly altered their societal roles (Blewett 1991:101, 116). 

Companies also significantly altered the structure of daily events and chores by removing 

women and children, the traditional foundations of the home and family, from houses for a 

considerable amount of time during the day (Pleck 1991). 

For other women, the shift to the industrial system corresponded with the rise in spatial divisions 

of labor with men working outside of the home, possibly in factory settings, and women 

managing the home and children. The dynamics of this shift changed most aspects of gender 

relationships and was tied to class identity. For instance, archeologist Diana Wall (1991) has 

studied the material signature of the cult of domesticity and changing gender roles in nineteenthcentury Greenwich Village, New York City, related to spatial patterns of work. Still, whether or 

not a woman worked outside of the home impacted the time and energy she had to maintain her 

family and home, the complete removal of men from the household during the day also 

significantly altered the duties and time women spent maintaining their households. 

Subsequently, changes in the performance of household labor practices occurred. Both at home 

and in the workplace, the change to an industrial economy altered gender identities, both 

masculine and feminine, in ways visible to archeological inquiry and essential to understanding 

current and past conceptions of gender identity. 
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The industrial era ushered in changes for the rest of the family and children in general. While 

children always represented some degree of labor in performing errands or tasks, with industrial 

labor they became a portion of the workforce as well. Early nineteenth-century small-scale 

industry employed children. Child labor has been defined as the wage earning of boys and girls 

under the age of fourteen (Montgomery 1987:132). Children represented a cheap labor force. 

Children were sometimes recruited from poorhouses, but a more ready supply was obtained from 

employing the entire family (Gordon et al. 1982:68). By the end of the nineteenth century, the 

working-class norm saw children finishing six years of elementary education prior to starting 

work unless the father was unable to work (Montgomery 1987:132). Still, the employment of 

children and the nature of that labor was dependent on industry, social relations, family 

dynamics, and current economics. For instance, more children tended to leave school to work 

during periods of economic depression (Montgomery 1987:132). 

Shifts in beliefs about the role of children in work/labor are seen in material culture and offer a 

line of inquiry to understanding these beliefs within the context of industry and social relations. 

For instance, the presence of toys recovered from nineteenth-century working-class tenement 

deposits from the neighborhood of the Five Points in New York City suggests some children had 

a degree of freedom from work and could participate in childhood activities (Brighton 2001; 

Griggs 1999:95). 

Archeologists have examined gender identities in industrial relations. Archeological research 

and landscape studies of the Boott Mills industrial complex in Massachusetts by Mary Beaudry 

and Stephen Mrozowski (Beaudry 1989; Beaudry et al. 1991; Mrozowski et al. 1996) examine 

the manner in which the owners of the mills instituted an ideology of paternalism that disciplined 

and regulated the gendered behaviors of workers. Initially, the operators of Boott Mills 

exclusively hired young unmarried girls from rural backgrounds as factory labor in their textile 

factories. These young women were housed together in boarding houses where they were 

closely watched. Behaviors such as “reading, singing, drinking, meetings, leaving work, and 

gambling” were prohibited as unsuitable to their performance as a disciplined labor supply 

(Beaudry 1989:20; Mrozowski et al. 1996:4). Archeologists, however, found evidence that 

workers resisted the efforts to restrict their behavior in the form of hidden caches of alcohol 
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bottles and tobacco pipes (Beaudry et al. 1991:168-169). 

Changing gender and social relations have been documented materially and spatially in other 

contexts. Historians and archeologists alike have noted the increasing separation between 

domestic spaces and workspaces over the course of the industrial period (Baxter 2002; Beaudry 

and Mrozowski 1988; Belford 2001; Cohen 1986). Ruth Cowan (1983) discusses the effects of 

industrialization on housework and daily life, including changes in architectural designs and use 

of space, increases in personal belongings, and the advent of germ theory. New household 

goods and tools offset the increase in duties due to the absence of men from the household, the 

rise in personal belongings, and new scientific theories. Lizbeth Cohen’s (1986) work examines 

the role of social reformers and companies in their efforts to regulate the home life of immigrant 

and working-class households using domestic furnishings, consumption patterns, and uses of 

space to reinforce or shape values emphasizes the intersecting effects of nativism and classbased ideologies on gender identities and familial relationships. Reformers, as well as 

companies, took up aesthetics to encourage social harmony and stability in the lives of workers. 

Company housing exemplified these aesthetics, employing simplicity, minimalism, and 

reinforced particular uses for interior spaces. Smaller units with separate entrances and smaller 

rooms reinforced a middle-class focus on the nuclear family in place of the communal values of 

the boardinghouse. The separation of rooms in company housing reinforced middle-class 

conceptions of divided social, work, and private spaces (Cohen 1986:266). 

Margaret Wood’s (2002a, 2002b) work in the coal company town of Berwind uses the 

archeology of domestic refuse and household economy to demonstrate the agency of women’s 

efforts in the home within the context of broad historical and social changes. Wood (2002b) 

argues that archeology demonstrates that patterns of consumption and domestic labor in the 

working class households of Berwind, Colorado, between 1900 and 1930, are distinct from the 

well-documented findings in middle-class households of this period. In one example, she 

indicates that during the striking era of Berwind’s history women contributed to household 

economy by communal cooking and cleaning and the taking in of boarders. These efforts also 

helped to build the community cohesion necessary for enduring the difficult economic 

conditions brought on by striking. In later years, when middle-class households seem to indicate 
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a preference for mass-produced foodstuffs, working-class women were conserving their money, 

relying instead upon efforts at thrift including communal cooking and home canning (Wood 

2002b). Scholars such as Wood and others highlight the efforts company reformers took to 

reduce the effects of communalism they perceived as emanating from the domestic realm of 

working-class households. Such efforts attempted to restrict communal cooking behaviors, the 

boarding of single males and extended family, and the familial usage of household space (Cohen 

1986; Wood 2002a). 

Reform efforts during the Progressive Era focused on altering ethnic and gender identities. Part 

of these efforts in the early twentieth century advocated for spreading middle-class meal 

preparation and service norms that included the use of nationally marketed processed food 

(Venable et al. 2000:19). Canned goods, though still expensive, saw a drop in prices and were 

seen as a symbol of Americanization (Levenstein 2003:107). Just like ceramics and glassware, 

having and using these commodities properly was perceived as essential for inclusion and using 

brands and acceptable food commodities was part of being accepted as “American.” Social 

workers, public health workers, and dietary reforms in the early twentieth century, not 

recognizing how economic insecurity structured diet, attacked the “inferior” way that the 

working class, especially newer immigrants, chose, prepared, and served their food (Levenstein 

2003:103). For reformers, immigrants needed to be discouraged from making their spicy, 

mixed foods and were encouraged to adopt more of an Americanized diet and dining etiquette 

(Levenstein 2003:103-105). These reform efforts were linked to labor relationships and the 

rights of different ethnic and racialized groups. The pressure to conform to these social norms 

can be seen in the type of goods consumed such as national brands, and the manner in which 

they were consumed. Material culture thus can present a more nuanced picture of the 

negotiation of these and other social norms over time by various individuals and groups. 

Efforts by archeologists to add complexity to gender would not be complete without recognition 

of the construction of masculine identities, also equally affected by conditions or roles associated 

with labor. The intersection of gender and race or ethnicity can be seen in the context of 

masculine identity among Chinese workers in the Market Street Chinatown in San Jose in the 

late nineteenth century. Archeologist Bryn Williams (2008) suggests that the jobs worked by a 
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largely male Overseas Chinese workforce including laundry labor, cooking, and other service 

work, were not considered normative to male-associated duties and roles among those of 

European ancestry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This led to a popular 

discourse that “emasculated” male Chinese laborers, a discourse that extended these associations 

with the material culture and daily practices and habits of these men (Williams 2008:56). 

William’s research focuses on the complex contradictory meanings different groups likely 

associated with the ubiquitous Chinese or Chinese-style ceramics frequently found in great 

quantities on such sites. He suggests that tiny porcelain cups, likely to be interpreted as feminine 

by nativist observers, were more likely to be understood within a Chinese drinking tradition that 

associated masculinity with both power and gentility. 

Labor, Class, and Conflict 

From its initial inception to the present, industrial relations and industrial effects have created 

tensions and conflict. During the period of transition to the factory system, labor disputes, 

actions, and organization became a tangible reality. Despite the apparent strength of 

industrialization and the great power that companies exerted over their workers, many workers 

resisted attempts at the implementation of industrialized work practices and domination and 

control over their daily lives (Gutman 1976:50-76, 79-117; McGuire and Reckner 2003; Shackel 

1996:59). While creating competition between native and foreign-born workers encouraged 

disorder in the workplace and discouraged unionization (Boris and Lichtenstein 1991:171-172), 

companies enabled workers to develop a collective voice by eliminating the individualism so 

strongly associated with the skilled craftsman (Montgomery 1991:289). Over the years, the 

number of unions representing workers wishes and demands against company policies and 

practices increased. In general, during most labor protests, workers fought for the institution of 

union rules, wage increases, and control over working conditions (Montgomery 1991:290-292). 

Economic, political, and social conflicts between companies and employees have always existed. 

The conflicting interests of the two groups encouraged the development of at least two social 

movements, the industrialization and unionization of labor. During the nineteenth century, when 

industrialization developed, most industries eventually replaced the artisan method of individual 

production and piece payment with the daily set pay of the wage labor movement (Shackel 
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1996:147-162). Because most industries and employers were determined to control work forces 

that were more unified and structured (Nash 1989), they created company policies that required 

work to be completed on the company property with set times for the commencement of breaks 

and recess. They also regulated and standardized hours and pay rates. All of these changes 

followed the industrialization movement. 

Workers responded to industrialization through protests, strikes, sabotage, and other forms of 

resistance. The end result of much union and protest activity was a standardization of work 

practices that benefitted both employers and employees (Montgomery 1991:296-297). The 

conflict and solidarity associated with the development of these organizations both drew people 

together and apart as social classes connected to their positions of work. In the process, conflict 

and organization of labor transformed the work and social landscape of the country. 

One characteristic of the industrial era is the formation of an industrialized work culture. One 

theory proposed by anthropologist June Nash (1989) is that the overriding goal of an industry is 

to create a unified work force, since this type of work force is much easier to control and 

understand than one composed of disparate ideas, values, and beliefs. To achieve this goal, 

corporations instituted policies to regulate their employees' habits and behavior inside and 

outside the work place, as is evident in many company towns (see for instance Mrozowski and 

Beaudry 1987; Bond 1989:23-29, 35). The material culture present on and within industrial 

landscapes constitutes an important line of archeological evidence regarding industrial life. 

Through the architecture of company housing and factories, employers were able to regulate 

behavior and work ethics. Through material culture and industrial discipline, corporations 

attempted to create a work force that acted similarly and held the same values and goals, 

believing that in this way they could retain a steady supply of reliable employees (Landon 

1989:41). Firmly enforced policies and practices, coupled with technological changes, caused 

greater and more far-reaching changes in the lifestyles and health of workers and their families 

(Shackel 1996). These practices and resistance to them are observable archeologically. 

Out of the factory’s consolidation of labor rose a new sense of worker solidarity and 

collectivism, initially organized around common craft (Montgomery 1991:289). Worker 
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solidarity encouraged protest to the new factory discipline, and industrial workers began to forge 

a new identity based on their common interests (Gutman 1976:54; Montgomery 1991:289-292; 

Shackel 1996:59). The conflicts arising out of this mobilization sometimes led to violent events, 

occasionally leading to participants killed on both sides of the confrontation. Most often, 

however, the death toll fell on the side of labor as during incidents such as the Lattimer Massacre 

(1897), the Ludlow Massacre (1913-1914), and the Battle of Blair Mountain (1921) (Blizzard 

2004; Jeffrey-Jones 1978; McGuire and Reckner 2003; Novak 1996; Roller 2013; Shackel and 

Roller 2012). Other times, this conflict was acted out within the realm of everyday life in the 

context of work and home. 

With its ability to identify aspects of history not included in the written record, archeological 

research has identified instances of labor resistance to the enforced discipline of industrial labor 

in the form of sabotage, foot dragging, and the rejection of discipline and regulation (Nassaney 

and Abel 2000; Shackel 2004). In Paul Shackel’s (2000) examination of the bottling works of 

the Harpers Ferry brewery, the discovery of a large cache of bottles hidden behind walls and in 

the elevator shaft of the brewing company illustrates a case of undocumented resistance against 

the established rules of industrial discipline and increasingly dangerous and unhealthy work 

conditions. Workers disobeyed the management’s rule banning the consumption of the factory’s 

product by employees (Shackel 2000). 

Changes in the organization of work centers, labor practices, worker status, and work conditions 

prompted the creation of early labor organizations and political parties, which facilitated the 

mounting protest from the working class. The development of a cohesive class consciousness 

among workers and amongst working class communities of diverse ethnic and racial origin are 

an important theme in labor research. Beginning in the 1990s, a group of archeologists began 

excavating the Ludlow Tent Colony site in Colorado (Larkin and McGuire 2009; McGuire and 

Walker 1999). The Ludlow scholars conducted participatory archeological research at the site of 

the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in which National Guardsmen machine-gunned and burned a 

striker’s camp, killing 20 of its inhabitants. Excavating with graduate and field school students 

for six field seasons, the collective has unearthed the remains of several tents and storage cellars 

(McGuire and Reckner 2003:88; Reckner 2009). Rather than taking the residents of the 
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surrounding area as the target community, the collective has adopted the organized labor 

movement in Southern Colorado as its target descendant community. Part of the project’s goal 

is to perform participatory archeology in the service of a community (Duke and Saitta 1998:1). 

McGuire and Reckner (2002) have used the data from Ludlow to explain labor relations in the 

west, a maneuver helping to situate the American West as a periphery in Wallerstein’s world 

systems theory model. The Ludlow Tent Colony Site is now an NHL designated in part for its 

national significance to labor archeology and is discussed in Section H. 

Class relations were altered with changes in industry and industrial relations. From the 1870s 

until the beginning of the Second World War, a shift occurred in the organization of work and 

the structure of labor markets with more jobs reduced to common, semi-skilled labor. Control of 

the labor process was concentrated among foreman and their employers (Gordon et al. 1982:3). 

Capital and production also became increasingly concentrated (Beaud 1983:117; Kuczynski 

1973:124). As operations grew in size from the 1870s to the 1920s, office work became a more 

important aspect of industries and operations (Arnesen et al. 2003). The position of supervisors, 

craftsmen, and foremen who became office workers maintaining, scheduling, and ordering the 

work day and work processes, also grew at this time (Arnesen et al. 2003). This shift in control 

and the hierarchy of control affected the dynamics of worker relations and conflicts. 

The work of the Ludlow project illustrates the dynamics of a protracted and open conflict 

between management and labor. Industrial sites are, of course, richly complex not only with the 

conflict caused by new impositions of labor, but also by the kinds of social relations embodied 

there. The period also saw a great deal of conflict related to racial and ethnic identities as White 

workers attempted to defend their jobs from the perceived threat of African-American and 

immigrant workers (Roediger 1999; Towers 2000). Barbara Voss (2005) for example, points to 

the relationship between white industrial labor unions and violence surrounding the destruction 

of San Jose’s Chinatown in 1887. Voss (2005:430, 432) further points out that industrial labor 

contexts were important sites of intercultural encounter and communications in the nineteenthcentury West. Similarly, Mark Walker (2008a) describes a worker’s hierarchy in West Oakland 

that was shaped by nativist and racial discourses as well as the perceived skill levels of certain 

types of workers. Walker suggests that domestic life can be interpreted as producing and 
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expressing a material culture that indicates certain ideas about class consciousness. This 

approach requires taking into account multiple perspectives at once. In the case of the Cypress 

Freeway project in Oakland, the consumption of faunal material and dining ceramics were 

examined. It was found that symbolic differences existed between the quality and quantity of 

material objects these groups consumed. While the unskilled workers spent more on cuts of 

meat, the skilled craftsmen consumed more expensive sets of formal dining ware, participating 

for their own reasons in the ritualized dining that came along with the middle-class cult of 

domesticity. These variations do not necessarily suggest an acculturation or an emulation of 

middle-class values, but a situated negotiation of these values based upon local conditions. 

Other researchers (Baxter 2002; Van Bueren 2002a) have examined specific contexts such as 

Western work camps to see how class relations play out in these specific contexts. Wood 

(2002a) and Hardesty (2002) have examined work and gender in the frontier company towns, 

noting how such marginal cultural settings allowed women to negotiate new identities as 

workers and activists garnering new kinds of social and economic power. Margaret Wood’s 

work on the coal company town of Berwind, Colorado is a component of the Ludlow 

Collective’s broader investigation of class solidarity and conflict in the coal region of Colorado. 

Many of the families residing in the strike camp at Ludlow were former residents of the 

company town of Berwind. Through her archeological examination of domestic refuse and 

landscape features, Wood learned that the role of women of diverse ethnic backgrounds was 

essential to the development of strong class and community identities necessary to endure strike 

conditions. Post-strike assemblages are contextualized by Wood (2002b) in the administrative 

practices that aimed at limiting these capacities. In the process, they disempowered women by 

rendering them solely dependent on men’s wages for household income. 

Communities and Collectives 

Industrial work and relations brought about changes to social life and organization. The effects 

of changing systems of labor are so far-reaching as to be fundamental to the formation of all 

other social relations in a society, even those outside the workplace (Delle et al. 2000, Shackel 

1996, Silliman 2006). For this reason, the examination of working-class communities and other 

places of habitation provide important evidence for understanding broad social changes directly 
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related to changes in work and affecting wider society. This research domain examines the 

broader impact of the industrial era to the social grouping of people. While this focus intersects 

with the other three domains, a conceptualization of sites and their assemblages at the level of 

the collective or the community is crucial for contextualizing the broader impacts of industry and 

the regional or national significance of sites. 

Communities responded to industry and industrial relations differently depending on a host of 

factors such as different social relations, location, and the nature of the work. Labor archeology 

conducted in these industrial landscapes can examine the wider pattern of social formations 

associated with workers and their families, asking research questions regarding settlement 

composition, design, and density, the impact of industry, environmental adaptation, and 

community health. For instance, Beaudry and Mrozowski’s (1989c) multidisciplinary studies of 

the Boott Mills complex in the Lowell National Historical Park address the historical archeology 

of class and industrial labor at the community level by examining several sites together. 

Beaudry (1989, 1993) and Mrozowski et al. (1989) produced a broad contextual view of 

nineteenth-century mill operatives’ lives. Through this comparison of sites, they were able to 

examine everyday conditions through the multiple lenses of archeobotany, faunal, microfaunal, 

landscape, and material culture analyses. These analyses link examinations of public health, 

hygiene, landscape, and corporate paternalism with the introduction and adoption or rejection of 

nineteenth-century middle-class Victorian values across the hierarchy of the community. 

Archeology has also examined the impact of industry outside of company towns. In urban 

environments, neighborhoods may develop based around the occupation of a laboring group 

defined by profession, class, or ethnic background or in connection to a specific industry. Such is 

the case in the West Oakland Cypress Freeway project, which examined a working-class 

neighborhood occupied by workers of varying backgrounds associated with the labor provided 

by the terminus of the Central Pacific Railroad (Walker 2008a). The Irishtown Bend site in 

Cincinnati is another such neighborhood defined by its industry, consisting of a laboring Irish 

population which settled along the banks of the Cuyahoga River. The provenance of the 

neighborhood, extending from the mid-nineteenth to the first few decades of the early twentieth 

century, can be associated with a supply of inexpensive home sites in the low-lying floodplain of 
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the river adjacent to unskilled labor opportunities associated with the lake shipping port that 

thrived in the early days of Cleveland history. The archeological resources of this neighborhood 

reflect a variety of domestic and commercial sites connected to both the initial Irish occupation 

and the transition in the last two decades of the twentieth century to Eastern European migrants 

who replaced the Irish in identical labor functions (Lee 1989). 

Industrial communities also included utopian or reform communities. They represent alternative 

ways of working and living based on the principles of reformed industrialism that led to 

formation of distinct though often short-lived communities (Shackel 2009:62-63). These 

communities often sought to resist the new culture of industrial capitalism and include 

communities founded by social reformers and charismatic leaders, such as Robert Owen’s town 

of New Harmony and subsequent Owenite communities (Shackel 2009:62-63). Such 

communities offer a different perspective on community formation and dynamics and labor 

organization than corporate-based industrial towns. These communities are a unique data set 

and pose different research questions and interests and thus, deserve their own theme study. 

Therefore, utopian and reform communities are not addressed in this theme study. 

Government programs also led to the formation of communities or significant changes to 

existing communities based on industry. For instance, the Spruce Production Division (SPD) 

project from 1917 to 1918 has the potential to contain a vast archeological resource 

encompassing an early instance of Federal intervention in industrial technology and labor 

relations. In the early years of the First World War, among rising demand for spruce to build 

airplanes for the war effort, the lumber industry of Oregon was crippled by clashes between 

management and workers. Workers, organized by the Industrial Workers of the World, 

demanded better working and living conditions. In response, the Federal government 

intervened. They put soldiers to work for the logging industry of the state, making uniform 

demands for the labor and living conditions of all workers. They also constructed massive 

infrastructure improvements in the area. Though the SPD only lasted for a few years, it had a 

massive effect on the landscape of the Northwest coast, administering nearly one hundred 

separate locations in which soldiers and loggers lived and worked. The project is also believed 

to have been the model for later generations of Federal work programs such as the Civilian 
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Conservation Corps or CCC (Tonesfeldt 2013). 

With the 1929 collapse of the United States stock market, laborers became desperate for work. 

The government took an active role in revitalizing the economy by establishing both the Works 

Progress Administration or WPA and the CCC, among other broad scale government work 

programs (Bloxom 1982:1). These projects employed not only blue collar workers, who created 

a lasting impression on the landscape by constructing dams and the United States road system, 

but also white collar workers, artists, writers, and musicians (Bloxom 1982). WPA and CCC 

properties relate an unusual and complex connection between labor and government activity. 

Through the excavation of work camps, labor sites, and examination of government and 

historical records this important chapter of the nation’s history can be told. New Deal 

archeologists also, it should be noted, were responsible for performing some of the fundamental 

work of historical archeology in this nation, particularly in the American Southwest (Fagette 

1996; Lyon 1996). 

F. Associated Property Types 

Property Types as Categories 

The Labor Archeology Theme Study utilizes a property classification system that makes use of 

property classes and types as described in the National Register Bulletin: How to Apply the 

National Register Criteria for Evaluation (NPS 1997). Properties are classified as buildings, 

sites, districts, structures, or objects (NPS 1997:4). For the purposes of this study, property types 

are grouped into two major classes: sites and districts. 

Property Classes: 

•Sites: A site is the location of a significant event, a historic occupation or activity, or a 

building or structure, whether standing, ruined, or vanished, where the location itself 

possesses historic, cultural, or archeological value regardless of the value of any existing 

structure. 
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•Districts: A district possesses a significant concentration, linkage, or continuity of sites, 

buildings, structures, or objects united historically or aesthetically by plan or physical 

development. 

In this study, sites are deposits of archeological and historical value that are associated with 

industrial labor. Districts are defined as multiple sites or deposits of archeological and historical 

value that are associated with industrial labor. Districts are a collection of related properties of 

archeological and historical value that can all document industrial labor. The district has the 

capacity to highlight many different aspects of work and life. Therefore, the district can be 

composed of properties that are themselves potentially significant for illustrating aspects of 

industrial labor. The district can also be a collection of properties that are not individually 

significant, but together illustrate a more complete picture of industrial labor and thus constitute 

a significant district. Special attention should be paid to understanding the different properties of 

a community, town, or area and the relation of these properties to work and work life. Such an 

attention encompasses a review of the landscape of industrial labor and the interrelation of its 

components rather than treating properties as isolated and discrete entities. The National 

Register Bulletin: How to Prepare National Historic Landmark Nominations (NPS 1999:64-67) 

provides guidance on selecting the boundaries of sites and districts. Several general property 

types can be delineated from the property classes. 

Property Types include: 

•Worker housing 

•Social and Commercial sites 

•Institutional sites 

•Industrial worksites 

•Infrastructure sites 

Each of these broad property types is discussed in turn with examples of specific sites or districts 

that illustrate the different types. Because there is considerable overlap between property types, 

some types are discussed under more than one category. The property types are listed with the 
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prominent or most common examples; other specific sites not listed below may be included 

under these property types depending on the historical context of the site or district. 

Worker Housing 

At the basic level, worker and employer housing is the location of the residence of workers, 

employers, and/or their families. This housing may comprise individual properties or contribute 

to a broader industrial community district. The remains of worker and employer housing 

indicate community social structure, ethnic, racial, and class divisions, political influences, 

company policies, cultural styles and trends, and individual wants and needs. Typical 

archeological features associated with worker housing are cellars, wells, privies, foundations, 

partially standing structures, standing structures, and domestic trash concentrations. Worker 

housing can include both company and worker-constructed houses and boarding houses in a 

variety of styles and materials. Common forms of worker housing include single-family homes, 

tenements, apartments or attached housing units, boarding houses, hotels, shanties, and 

impermanent homes, such as tents or dugouts. 

Several factors influenced the form of housing in which a worker lived. The identity of the 

building commissioner was one principal determinant in the form of worker housing constructed. 

One major commissioner of worker housing was the corporation. Corporations commissioned 

the construction of housing to supply their workers with reasonably priced, local dwellings. The 

houses, whether single family home, tenement, hotel, or boarding house, also offered 

corporations the opportunity to attempt to further control the lives and behavior of their workers 

(Beaudry and Mrozowski 1989b; Bond 1989; Mulrooney 1989:9-27). Many corporations 

established strict policies against drinking, rowdy behavior, and non-employee residents in their 

boarding houses (Bond 1989:23-36). In this way, corporations could try to control how workers 

conducted themselves during their free time and with whom they had daily contact (Bond 

1989:27). 

Corporations could further influence workers lives through the architectural designs of the 

housing they commissioned. In Lowell, as in many other company towns, corporations instituted 
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a strict, uniform, and simplistic design in their workers' housing. Corporations intended this 

form of design to imply corporate success and a sense of control and order in their workforce 

(Landon 1989:41; Mrozowski and Beaudry 1989:290). While company housing enabled 

employers to attempt to further control the home lives of their workers, privately constructed 

homes provided workers with the opportunity to express their personal culture and personal 

preferences. Workers, who constructed their own homes or lived in single-family rentals, could 

defy corporation attempts at forming a unified workforce by selecting their own building 

materials and styles. 

Despite any intentional or subconscious attempts to defy corporations or popular opinion in a 

houses' physical presentation to the public, economic and social conditions such as the workers’ 

ethnic background or social status affected the form and quality of the homes constructed. 

Wealthier and higher status employees, such as managers, often lived in single-family homes 

made from more substantial and refined materials. Logically, economic boundaries also limited 

the form and quality of the homes the working-class could construct, often forcing them to use 

lesser quality materials and simpler designs. Divisions of class, race, and ethnicity are visible in 

the layout, conditions, and style of workers' housing at some sites. For example, at the Chinese 

Mining Camp Archeological Site in Idaho (Elliott 1994), canvas and repair tool remains indicate 

that workers here constructed impermanent homes in a distinctive Chinese style for American 

mining camps. In the Lower Salmon River Archeological District in Idaho (Sisson and Swanson 

1986), the difference between Chinese and European mining practices and living conditions are 

also noticeably present in the archeological record. Personal housing here offered workers the 

opportunity to purchase and prepare their homes and daily experiences as they desired (e.g., 

types of furnishing used, types of foods prepared, and table settings used) (Bond 1989:23, 30; 

Dutton 1989:87-88). Regardless of social status, workers could make similar statements with 

their personal behavior, appearance, and consumption habits when corporate housing policies did 

not restrict them. 

Ideas about the hierarchy of industry or relations in industry can be studied by a comparison of 

the difference in the architecture and spatial relationships between segments of the working 

population. For instance, Mrozowski (2006:74) documents company attempts to inscribe the 
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hierarchy of the Lowell mills in the built environment by studying residential form and size. 

Randall McGuire (1991) details different industrial landscapes in late nineteenth and twentiethcentury Broome County, New York. Company owner Jonas Kilmer constructed a landscape and 

used architecture to emphasize the gulf between him and his workers while another owner 

George F. Johnson did the opposite by building his house in the same style as his workers 

(McGuire 1991). 

The placement of homes and communities affected the quality of life for workers and employers. 

Work camps and company towns connected to resource extraction, construction or agricultural 

work were often located as close as possible to the natural sources of wealth. This resulted in 

isolated settlements in regions remote or peripheral to the urban centers where the bulk of these 

resources were consumed or processed (Van Bueren 2002a). In the case of many Western work 

camps, including those for mineral extraction, timbering and agricultural work, these were 

sometimes transient settlements that leave an ephemeral footprint for archeological investigation. 

Nonetheless, interesting archeological work has been conducted on these types of sites that offers 

a snapshot of clearly defined temporal and social origin for comparison (Hardesty 2002). 

Company towns that were developed by Industrial-era capitalist ventures in mining and 

manufacturing developed rigidly structured company towns which generated, maintained, and 

reflected differentiation and stratification within the social ranks occupied by management and 

various levels of skilled and unskilled labor. These company towns vary by region, industry, and 

temporal context, but each demonstrates important clues about the intended or real relationships 

between labor and capital. In the case of many mining or resource extractive company towns, 

housing provided by companies typically consisted of economic, quickly built dwellings for 

workers. High initial capital investment costs in technological and industrial aspects of the work 

frequently resulted in a company’s attempt to recapture this capital by providing minimal 

investment in infrastructure including heating or indoor plumbing (Aurand 2003; Mulrooney 

1991). 
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Social and Commercial Sites 

Social and commercial sites represent properties, not residences, institutions, or workplaces that 

were connected with social life and/or commercial functions. Social structures in worker 

communities are important for the role they played in workers' daily lives. These properties can 

include a wide range of functions including recreation, culture, education, religion, health, 

funerary, and social life. The quantity, quality, cost, and variety of social enterprises in a 

community influenced how workers' entertained themselves, along with how workers' free time 

and home life was structured. The actual design, construction method, and size of social 

structures and buildings varied, as did the activities to which each catered. 

Social structures common in many industrial contexts include buildings such as hotels, cafes, 

saloons, brothels, meeting halls, town squares, parks, and dance halls. These structures provided 

workers with the opportunity to socialize with others and to participate in an activity other than 

work. The artifact concentrations associated with these structures provide additional information 

on the activities and practices in social areas. Goldfield Historic District in Nevada contains 

information on the commercial life of an early twentieth-century gold mining town. Ruins from 

Goldfield's commercial district include a social club, several banks, a saloon, lodging house, and 

a hotel (Woodward et al. 1982). Artifacts gathered in this area, particularly around the club and 

saloon, may provide researchers with valuable information on the types of activities and 

customers catered to at these social and commercial establishments. 

The commercial structures and buildings in workers' communities also provided needed or 

wanted goods and services to workers and their families. Commercial structures include stores, 

restaurants, banks, and markets. The presence or absence of certain goods and services, their 

price, and their availability all affected the structure and quality of workers' home lives. These 

structures and buildings varied by design, construction method, and size according to the needs, 

wants, and economic means of the owners and the communities surrounding them. The artifact 

concentrations associated with these structures provide additional information on the different 

activities and practices in commercial areas. Individual social and commercial properties are 

also very useful for labor history analyses. For example, excavations at the Hoff Store Site in 

San Francisco provided researchers with information on the consumption habits of early to mid-
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nineteenth-century Pacific West settlers, particularly gold prospectors (Pastron and Hattori 

1990). 

The connection of commercial and social sites to industry can shed light on the role and extent to 

which industry or industries shaped life outside of the workplace. Company sponsored or 

structured activities or buildings extended the influence of industry. In the early nineteenth 

century, George F. Johnson created a landscape for his workers that included such structures and 

places as parks and hospitals and which can be interpreted as an effort to downplay class 

differences and promote the appearance of equality (McGuire 1991:114-123). Other, potentially 

non-company sanctioned, activities could have had the opposite effect. For instance, taverns 

were potential locations of solidarity and bonding for workers and often a means of escape for 

male workers (Hall et al. 1987:164; Montgomery 1987:91; Rorabaugh 1979:151). 

Institutional Sites 

The institutional structures found in workers' communities were responsible for providing special 

services to area residents. Community schools, churches and other religious buildings, hospitals, 

and jails could improve the quality of life in the area by offering services to improve resident’s 

mental, spiritual, and physical health. Other properties include sites related to governmental or 

military institutions directly linked to the industrial community such as post offices, courthouses, 

fire stations, and military facilities. In company towns, corporations often constructed 

institutional structures to draw new laborers into an area and to insure the continued presence of 

current employees. 

Institutions provide a wide range of data that offers another avenue to understand industry and 

life outside of work and the relations associated with it. Institutions can be studied to understand 

quality of life and the services available to workers. The degree to which workers and their 

community had access to institutional services can illustrate the social relations and inequality 

within a community. Beyond offering basic services, institutions helped structure the dynamics 

of the town as well. Churches and other religious buildings and schools were social centers of 

identity and ideas and could be supportive of or against industry, industry’s impacts, and 

industrial relations. 
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Industrial Worksites 

As a large percentage of a workers' day was spent in the work place, these structures and 

buildings are important to a study of workers' communities. Worksites encompass a wide-range 

of potential properties depending on the specific type of production from factories to quarries 

and many ancillary and supportive locations such as storage facilities or processing sites. Often, 

work-related structures, buildings, and features served as the economic center of workers' 

communities. In company towns, the work centers were also responsible for the provision and 

maintenance of most other community structures and buildings. Strong industrial centers also 

drew other enterprises and residents to an area. The location, design, and structure of industrial 

centers also often influenced town layout and development. Changes in the material culture in 

industrial centers over time may provide answers to questions such as how workers interacted 

with other employees and employers and how changing technology and work practices affected 

workers' lives inside the work place. 

Work related buildings and structures are significant in several other ways. These buildings and 

structures may be noteworthy for the role they played in the development of local, regional, and 

national economies, as architectural or engineering feats, and for their potential association with 

expanding science and technology. Industrial archeologists have examined the remains of 

industrial structures, analyzing the architecture, structure, and organization of industries and 

industrial complexes, and have created a considerable bibliography and documentary record of 

industrial properties. This substantial data should be drawn upon to aid in the identification and 

understanding of industrial worksites or used for comparison purposes. 

Infrastructure sites 

Infrastructure sites represent properties connected to serving the needs of industry and/or 

communities. Community infrastructure includes such elements as sewer systems, road systems, 

power lines, water lines, canals, and railroads. These structures and features affected the quality 

of life for area residents. The availability of transportation routes, clean water, and sewage 

disposal was important as they helped towns expand, maintain health, and generally encourage 

workers to remain in communities. Many corporations constructed these features in company 

towns to facilitate industrial functions, but they also constructed these features for the well-being 
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of their local employees (Bond 1989:25; Mrozowski et al. 1989). Archeologically, the remains 

of town or community infrastructure may reflect how and why individuals perceived the space 

and layout of their environment, as well as possible changes to the use of space following labor 

or societal changes. Other types of labor sites may also have developed around the need to 

create infrastructure properties. One such example is the Blackstone Canal Historic District in 

Massachusetts (Adams et al. 1995), which contains the remains of an early nineteenth-century 

canal constructed to provide a transportation route for passengers and commercial or industrial 

shipments and to help harness waterpower. A number of boardinghouses, impermanent 

construction camps, and nearby dwellings or farmsteads provided workers with residences for 

the duration of this construction project (Adams et al. 1995). 

Infrastructure properties are also important for reasons similar to those of other industrial 

properties. These properties may be significant for the role they played in the development of 

local, regional, and national economies, as architectural or engineering feats, and their potential 

association with expanding science and technology. 

Property Type Summary 

Each of the property types encompasses an archeological site. A related grouping of similar or 

different property types represented by individual archeological sites constitutes a district. For 

instance, a row of several homes belonging to workers and owners in a mining town would be a 

collection of archeological sites and illustrative of the worker housing property type. Their 

proximity and/or common relationship to the mining industry would allow them to be grouped as 

a district. In this example, other property types such as infrastructure sites, industrial work sites, 

social and commercial sites, and institutional sites related to the industry could also each be 

considered archeological sites and all grouped under the category of a district along with the 

worker housing based on their shared affiliation to the mining industry. Such a broader 

consideration of industrial community beyond the worksite allows for a more dynamic and 

nuanced understanding of the lives of workers, their families, and people associated with or 

impacted by industry. 
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Research Questions 

This section suggests and summarizes research issues and questions significant to labor 

archeology of the Industrial era within the context of the labor research domains proposed in this 

study and the National Historic Landmark Thematic Framework. Examples of currently 

designated and potentially eligible National Historic Landmarks and National Register properties 

whose documentation records or suggests the existence of resources possessing levels of 

integrity capable of contributing significant information at the national level are mentioned under 

the appropriate labor research topic. 

The four broad research domains described above correlate with the topics outlined in the 

National Park Service Thematic Framework (NPS 1996). The Revised Thematic Framework 

serves as a conceptual tool for evaluating the significance of cultural resources and as an outline 

of major themes and concepts that help to conceptualize American history. The Framework can 

then be used to help identify cultural resources that embody America's past and to describe and 

analyze the multiple layers of history represented by the property types (see Table 1). 

The following table and section connect each domain to the most relevant themes and topics 

from the Framework and property types. The correlation stresses the relevancy of the proposed 

domains from this study for addressing the broader topics represented in each nationally 

significant resource. The number of applicable Framework themes and topics indicates the 

diversity and breadth, as well as the potential wealth of data, offered by the study of industrial 

labor in the US. 

The research questions and their intersections with and elucidation through the Framework 

themes provide a means to focus and evaluate research on different aspects of labor archeology. 

While these questions and their intersections are a useful means for this purpose, they are not 

mutually exclusive. The research domains and subdomains of this theme study and the topics and 

themes of the Framework are woven together as part of the comprehensive picture of life and 

work in the Industrial era. Researchers should consider the interrelation of these different 

elements of labor archeology. These connections, along with the specific foci of the research 

domains, will help frame the assessment of the broader significance of a property or properties. 
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Table 1: Matrix of Property Types by Thematic Framework Themes and Labor Archeology 

Theme Study Research Domains 

Framework Themes and Topics Labor 

Processes 

Labor and 

Identity 

Labor, 

Class, and 

Conflict 

Communities 

and 

Collectives 

Peopling Places 

-Family and the Life Cycle

-Health, Nutrition, and Disease

-Migration from Outside and Within

-Community and Neighborhood

-Ethnic Homelands

-Encounters, Conflicts, and Colonization

-Worker 

 households 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

 

-Industrial 

 worksites 

-Infrastructure 

-Worker 

 households 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

-Worker 

 households 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

-Worker 

 households 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

Creating Social Institutions and Movements 

-Clubs and Organizations

-Reform Movements

-Religious Institutions

-Recreational Activities

 -Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

Expressing Cultural Values 

-Educational and Intellectual Currents

-Visual and Performing Arts

-Literature

-Mass Media

-Architecture, Landscape Architecture, 

 and Urban Design

-Popular and Traditional Culture

-Worker 

 households 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

-Worker 

 households 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

Shaping the Political Landscape 

-Parties, Protests, and Movements

-Governmental Institutions

-Military Institutions and Activities

-Political Ideas, Cultures, and Theories

 -Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

Developing the American Economy 

-Extraction and Production

-Distribution and Consumption

-Transportation and Communication

-Workers and Work Culture

-Labor Organizations and Protests

-Exchange and Trade

-Governmental Policies and Practices

-Economic Theory

-Worker 

 households 

-Industrial 

 worksites 

-Institutional 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Infrastructure 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

 

-Worker 

 households 

-Worker 

 households 

-Industrial 

 worksites 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

Expanding Science and Technology 

-Experimentation and Invention

-Technological Applications

-Scientific Thought and theory

-Effects on Lifestyle and Health

-Worker 

 households 

-Industrial 

 worksites 

-Infrastructure 

 

 
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Framework Themes and Topics Labor 

Processes 

Labor and 

Identity 

Labor, 

Class, and 

Conflict 

Communities 

and 

Collectives 

Transforming the Environment 

-Manipulating the Environment and its 

 Resources

-Adverse Consequences and Stress on the 

 Environment

-Protecting and Preserving the 

 Environment 

-Worker 

 households 

-Industrial 

 worksites 

-Infrastructure 

Changing Role of the United States in the 

World Community 

-International Relations

-Commerce

-Expansion and Imperialism

-Immigration and Emigration Policies

-Industrial 

 worksites 

-Infrastructure 

-Worker 

 households 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Social and 

 Commercial 

-Institutional 

Table 1 provides a matrix of the intersections between the Framework themes and topics and the 

Labor Archeology Theme Study domains by property type. Researchers should use the table to 

help determine what research questions are potentially applicable for their property types and the 

questions and topics that can be addressed. The table serves as a guide, not a prescription, to aid 

researchers in ensuring the historic context is fully developed. For instance, industrial worksites 

can be used to address several of the Framework themes in the Labor Processes and Labor, 

Class, and Conflict domains. Based on the data set, a researcher may find that industrial 

worksites can best address the topic of both worker and work culture as well as conflict in the 

workplace. Using this determination, the data can be analyzed around these research questions 

and the level of significance of the property assessed. The use of the table and applicable 

Criteria can be used to explore elements of the history of industrial labor beyond archeology as 

well. 

Connection to the Framework themes and topics provides an opportunity to assess the level of 

significance of a property. The majority of questions are scalable in terms of their significance: 

local, regional, and/or national. To this end, the proposed research questions are left open and 

scalable. The ability to connect the Framework topics with comparable data and larger trends 

provides for an increasing level of significance. Researchers should attempt to place their 

property in wider regional and national contexts and use comparisons to assess significance and 

relevance. The following section details the intersection of the domains and Frameworks 
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themes and topics and possible research questions to help researchers maximize a property’s 

potential to detail labor history. 

Labor Processes 

Labor archeology sites and properties associated with Labor Processes include places with the 

research potential to illuminate nationally significant aspects of the social, economic, and 

political systems of industrial labor as they exemplify industrial processes of labor and their 

transformation from previous forms of work. These sites may include districts or individual 

households of workers, including those in company towns, industry-related or dependent 

neighborhoods, or villages. Sites exemplifying data on labor processes can also include 

manufacturing towns, wharfs, canals, company towns, resource extraction sites, factories, 

sweatshops, apparel works, mills, furnaces, warehouses, glass works, potteries, and construction 

sites as well as associated infrastructure such as canals and dams. 

The Framework theme, Peopling Places, includes the topics: family and the life cycle; health, 

nutrition, and disease; migration from outside and within; community and neighborhood; ethnic 

homelands; and encounters, conflicts, and colonization (NPS 1996:7). The dynamics of the 

family life from the composition of the household and workforce to the economics of the family 

were dramatically altered and realigned. Evidence of this change can be found at worker 

households, social and commercial sites, and industrial worksites. The impact of industry also 

changed patterns of health and nutrition and incidences of disease, which can be studied at 

worker households, social and commercial sites, infrastructure sites, and industrial worksites. 

Archeological evidence of both topics can be seen through an analysis of the soils, faunal, floral, 

human remains, and material deposits. 

The Framework theme, Developing the American Economy, includes the topics: extraction and 

production; distribution and consumption; transportation and communication; workers and work 

cultures; labor organizations and protests; exchange and trade; governmental policies and 

practices; and economic theory (NPS 1996:11). Industrial labor brought upon and necessitated 

new forms of extraction and production, distributions and consumptions, as well as means and 

patterns of transportation and communication. Industrial worksites, such as manufacturing, 
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processing, mining, timber and lumber, and commercial operations, contribute to the extraction 

and production topic and to the distribution and consumption topic. The transportation and 

communication topic as well as distribution topic can be applied to infrastructure sites. 

Likewise, consumption patterns point to different economic relationships as well as new forms of 

production. The worker and work culture topic and the exchange and trade topic could be 

illustrated by worker housing and social and commercial sites. Governmental policies, practices, 

and economic theory can be seen at institutional sites. 

The Framework theme, Expanding Science and Technology, includes the topics: 

experimentation and invention; technological applications; effects on lifestyle and health; and 

scientific thought and theory (NPS 1996:12). The effects on lifestyle and health can be seen in 

industrial worksites and worker housing. Industrial worksites and infrastructure sites detail 

technological applications and the imposition of scientific theory and experimentation and 

theory. 

Industrialization was accompanied by many technological changes. The invention and 

implementation of new labor technologies, such as the institution of piecework seen at Harpers 

Ferry, changed the way in which laborers worked and perceived their work. Workers at most 

manufacturing operations toiled at an increased speed and produced a greater quantity of items 

with the aid of new machinery and labor practices such as the assembly line. These workers 

were less attached to their products and the production process than earlier workers were during 

the artisan production period. Archeological evidence of changes in technology may be found in 

changes in the material culture associated with the production process. 

New technology also impacted workers' health conditions. Changing production and processing 

methods often forced workers to labor in unhealthy conditions and environments for a significant 

period of time. For example, the increase in harmful fumes released during production and 

changes in air quality and temperature caused an increase of bronchial infections and diseases 

among miners, furnace and forge operators, and brewery workers. The faster speed of 

machinery, such as weaving and spinning devises, also threatened physical harm to workers in 

mills and factories. 
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Working conditions at many labor sites, particularly mining sites, often endangered the health 

and life of workers. Dangers such as unsanitary arrangements, unstable work sites, machinery, 

and pollution coupled with exhaustive working hours brought about accidents, illnesses, and 

deaths. This theme includes sites connected to the health hazards and mortal dangers of many 

early working conditions. Mining communities where large numbers of workers were killed in 

accidents or from diseases related to underground excavation work, mills and factories where 

women and children were harmed by machinery or killed in fires, and breweries where workers 

received life-threatening illnesses from their working conditions are the types of sites for which 

this theme offers a research format. 

Archeologically, soil analyses and studies of privies and trash pits can reveal information on the 

impact of changing technologies on workers' health. An increase in parasites in soils and an 

increase presence of medicinal bottles or products in waste deposits after the implementation of 

industrialized labor practices are evidence of this issue. Research at Harpers Ferry (see Shackel 

and Winter 1994) proved the validity of this application of labor archeology. 

This theme also concerns the effect of changing technology and work systems on workers' and 

their families' lifestyles inside and outside the workplace. As described above, changes in labor 

practices following industrialization affected workers' lives on many levels. New company 

policies and the replacement of the artisan method of production during the 1800s are visible in 

the archeological record (Shackel 1996:147-162). Within the workplace, the absence of personal 

belongings, liquor bottles, or tobacco-related products reflects the institution of new company 

policies and the practice of the modern work ethic. The absence of work-related items in 

workers' domestic areas also supports the assumption or expectation of industrialization's 

separation of work from the home. In boardinghouses, the archeological record provides 

evidence of company policies on personal behavior and the structure of free time (Beaudry and 

Mrozowski 1989a:49-61). More specific research questions in this area include how workers 

responded to new company policies, technology, and the modern work ethic in their 

consumption habits; how workers' families adapted to the separation of work from the home; and 

how company policies affected workers' free time and social lives. 
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The NPS theme, Transforming the Environment, includes the topics: manipulating the 

environment and its resources; adverse consequences and stresses on the environment; and 

protecting and preserving the environment (NPS 1996:13). Evidence of manipulation of the 

environment and subsequent adverse consequences and stress on the environment can be seen in 

industrial worksites, infrastructure sites, and worker households. Industries and labor 

communities had an enormous impact on the environment and natural resources. Extractive 

operations and logging industries considerably altered the physical appearance of the 

environment by digging into the earth, clearing forested lands, and creating waste such as tailing 

piles and slag heaps. 

Beyond these changes to the environment that followed industrial development, labor enterprises 

altered the environment by harnessing natural resources (especially water resources), developing 

land for commercial and residential purposes, and increasing pollution as companies became 

more industrialized and areas became more populated. Archeologically, a study of the 

development of human habitation and industry within a region will supply information on 

subsequent transformations of the environment. Soil samples may indicate the introduction of 

new elements, such as fertilizers, to the environment as well as the depletion of natural resources 

and minerals. Physical alterations such as vegetation removal, commercial and residential 

development, and extractive industry processes should be readily visible in the existing 

landscape. 

The Framework theme, Changing Role of the United States in the World Community,

includes the topics: international relations; commerce; expansion and imperialism; and 

immigration and emigration policies (NPS 1996:14). The themes of commerce and expansion 

and imperialism are visible at industrial worksites and worker households. Patterns of 

consumption reflecting the spread of mass consumerism can illustrate the transformation of 

commerce that came about with the expansion of industrialism and the influence of policies, 

which supported this mode of production. 
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Labor Processes Research Questions: 

1) How did work culture and the lives of workers change during this period? How did work 

and changes in the mode of work affect the family and family relationships as seen at the 

community or regional level? 

2) How were health, nutrition, and quality of life impacted by the shift to industrial labor 

and changes in industrial labor? Can this shift be seen at the household, community, or 

state levels? Are there regional patterns in health, nutrition, or quality of life that are 

documented as part of a shift to or as a result of industrial labor and can this pattern be 

seen in just one or in different types of industrial work or in a specific time period? 

3) What were the patterns of migration and immigration that accompanied the demand for 

different levels of labor? Does the information from the site or district significantly 

contribute to the knowledge about migration and immigration patterns regionally or 

nationally? 

4) What were the patterns and impact of extraction, production, distribution, and 

consumption of the industrial era? How are these patterns identified regionally and how 

does the site or district contribute to that knowledge? Why is the site important for 

understanding regional or national patterns? 

5) What are the patterns of exchange, trade, and economic theory that characterized this 

mode of production? How are these patterns identified regionally or nationally and how 

do they change through time? Does the site or district characterize these patterns in a 

way that shows that change in a significant way? 

6) How did inventions change industry and industrial relations and how was technology 

applied in this context? 

7) How did these technologies effect lifestyle and health and impact the environment? Can 

such environmental change be seen at the state or regional and national levels? Can the 

property or properties provide important knowledge about these changes? 

8) How did industrialization affect and enable commerce, expansion, and imperialism? Can 

specific types of work within industrialization be tied to commerce, expansion and 

imperialism regionally and nationally? How does the site or district help us understand 

these issues? 
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Example How did work culture and the lives of workers change during this period? This is a 

research agenda that can be used to explore the impact of industrial shifts in the workplace as 

well as outside in the home. The archeology of multiple properties in the town of Harpers Ferry, 

West Virginia, has shown how significant changes in the work practices were reflected in the 

home (Lucas and Shackel 1994; Moyer and Shackel 2008; Palus and Shackel 2006; Shackel 

1996). Shackel and his colleagues examined how technological changes affected everyday lives 

as read through material culture. The sites excavated in Harpers Ferry are rare examples of a 

detailed archaeological study of the nationally significant shift in work practices, domesticity, 

and social relations with the transformation from craft to wage labor. For instance, Michael 

Lucas (1994) examined the changing meaning of household material culture, such as dinnerware, 

within the context of an industrial transformation. These deposits dated from the earliest armory 

occupation through the turn of the century providing an excellent sample through time to 

examine new consumer goods and work-related objects in the context of this significant shift in 

labor (Shackel 1996). 

Labor and Identity 

Labor archeology sites and properties associated with Labor and Identity detail the development 

or transformation of racial, ethnic, or gender identities or the categorization of laborers and their 

families related to the social conditions of work. Archeological sites relevant to Labor and 

Identity include those contexts discussed above in the sections on Race and Ethnicity and 

Gender. Labor archeology sites related to labor and identity include individual households or 

districts of workers including places such as individual dwellings, company towns, work camps, 

boardinghouses, bunkhouses, and hotels. They may also include social places in which the 

expression of cultural practices may be observable such as social halls or other recreational 

centers, commercial establishments, union buildings, and monuments. Labor and identity 

properties also can be places of work in cases in which entire industries or tasks within them may 

have been tied exclusively to particular groups of people as defined by ethnicity, race, or gender. 

These sites include properties such as factories, office buildings, extraction sites, agricultural 

operations, ranches, trading outposts, construction sites, and furnaces. 
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The Framework theme Peopling Places includes the topics: family and the life cycle; health, 

nutrition, and disease; migration from outside and within; community and neighborhood; ethnic 

homelands; and encounters, conflicts, and colonization (NPS 1996:7). Changes to industrial 

production and this mode of production affected facets of life related to the movement of people 

and identities. Evidence of migration and the family and life cycle can be seen at worker 

households, social and commercial sites, and institutional sites. 

Industry demands for labor forces often populated isolated regions. Natural resources, such as 

ore deposits or water resources that otherwise did not encourage commercial or residential 

development attracted companies to these areas, who in turn attracted a working population. In 

the archeological record, the material remains of industry-established labor camps that evolved 

into permanent settlements in isolated areas are good illustrators of the connection between the 

draw of labor and the peopling of places and the development of communities and 

neighborhoods. In other contexts, different groups shared established communities or outside 

groups were brought into existing communities to provide a cheaper and/or more compliant labor 

force. Encounters and conflicts may also be studied with the remains of these types of 

properties, particularly in instances where conflict occurred between different ethnic and/or class 

groups. 

This theme acknowledges the mobile lifestyles of many workers in the United States who were 

required to follow labor operations into different regions. Illustrations of this theme are available 

at the colony sites, logging camps, railroad camps, temporary mining communities, and migrant 

agricultural camps found throughout the country. This theme is also useful in illustrating how 

labor participated in the Euro-American settlement of outlying areas of the United States. 

The Framework theme Creating Social Institutions and Movements includes the topics: clubs 

and organizations; reform movements; religious institutions; and recreational activities (NPS 

1996:8). Social and commercial sites and institutional sites document the connection between 

identity and social institutions and movements. Social, religious, and recreational activities of 

different groups and their relation to industry can be illustrated by these properties. 
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The NPS theme Expressing Cultural Values includes the topics: education and intellectual 

currents; visual and performing arts; literature; mass media; architecture, landscape architecture, 

and urban design; and popular and traditional culture (NPS 1996:9). Cultural values can be read 

at points of transmission such as social and commercial sites and institutional sites as well as 

their potential internalization in worker households 

The development of cultures as individuals moved in and out of workers' communities, and the 

impact of industry on traditional cultures may be traced through the presence, absence, or style 

of artifact remains. Studying exchanges, adaptations, or the disappearance of cultural remains 

and styles may also clarify the interaction of different cultures at labor sites. From architectural 

remains, the differences in the style and the materials used in the housing of workers of different 

class and ethnicity can be useful in understanding perceptions and relationships among different 

groups of workers. Landscape architecture and urban design can also be useful for similar 

reasons in this context. 

The Framework theme Developing the American Economy includes the topics: extraction and 

production; distribution and consumption; transportation and communication; workers and work 

cultures; labor organizations and protests; exchange and trade; governmental policies and 

practices; and economic theory (NPS 1996:11). Workers and work culture and distribution and 

consumption practices can be seen in worker households and social and commercial sites. 

Variation in consumption patterns and work culture based on social relations can help illustrate 

the work relations and community dynamics between different groups. 

The Framework theme Changing Role of the United States in the World Community includes 

the topics: international relations; commerce; expansion and imperialism; and immigration and 

emigration policies (NPS 1996:14). Immigration and emigration policies, imperialism, and 

international relations can be seen at worker housing and social and commercial sites. The 

presence of different groups can help to illustrate the history and relationship of immigration and 

emigration policies to industry, and the broader sphere of international relations and policies. 
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Labor Identity Research Questions: 

1) How did different social relations and identities in the industrial era shift and impact the 

family in regards to general health and nutrition? Is the site or district reflective of 

regional or national shifts in social relations and general health? 

2) What were the dynamics between different social relationships and identities in the 

industrial era? Did they evolve in relation to industry with reference to the wider 

regional and national patterns of immigration and migration? How did the social 

categories of race, ethnicity, and gender affect hiring and work practices and how did 

these different identities intersect? 

3) What were the dynamics of identity that characterized participation in societal reform 

movements and religious institutions connected to industry? 

4) In the context of industry, how were cultural values expressed and reflected, such as in 

art, architecture, the built environment, and other elements of material culture? 

5) How did the changing role of the United States in commerce and international relations, 

as a result of industrial development, impact social relations through policies and actions 

such as expansion and immigration? The broader patterning of US policy should be seen 

in the material record reflecting community dynamics and the enforcement or lack of 

enforcement of such policies. 

Example In the context of industry, how were cultural values expressed and reflected in things 

such as art, architecture, the built environment, and other elements of material culture? A. E. 

Rogge’s (1995) study of the diverse ethnic makeup of Arizona dam workers examines foodways, 

drinking habits, and the dangers of dam construction. The archeological study revealed the 

segmentation and diversity of the work crew occupying this transient work camp. Rogge (1995) 

found evidence that some Apache workers lived in traditional wikiups and altered objects to 

serve the needs of their traditional cultures. Likewise, Don Hardesty’s (Hardesty et al. 1994) 

work on Reipetown in Eastern Nevada found that even though labor positions and ethnic and 

class divisions were divided up spatially, domestic occupations left no clearly discernible ethnic 

distinctions in the archeological record. Understanding the expression and negotiation of 

identity due to the impact of industry and industrial relations is important for understanding the 

dynamics of labor history of different groups. Both examples present nationally significant 
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patterns of cultural values and identities influenced or impacted by different and unique forms of 

work and labor relations. 

Labor, Class, and Conflict 

Labor archeology sites related to Class and Conflict include places in which class identities may 

have been assigned, negotiated, contested, or developed in the context of labor relations or 

shared work experiences. These properties may include individual households or entire districts 

where worker housing may have been including company towns, work camps, strike camps, 

boardinghouses, bunkhouses, and hotels. They may also include social places in which the 

expression of class identity may be observable or broadcast such as social halls or other 

recreational centers, saloons, commercial establishments, union buildings, and monuments. 

These properties also encompass sites of outright conflict, historical episodes that can serve as a 

solidifying force for the development of group identities. Sites of conflict and tension range 

from battlefields or massacre sites to strike camps, public spaces, political centers, monuments, 

and statuary. 

The Framework theme Peopling Places includes the topics: family and the life cycle; health, 

nutrition, and disease; migration from outside and within; community and neighborhood; ethnic 

homelands; and encounters, conflicts, and colonization (NPS 1996:7). Conflict resulting from 

the movement of people, especially different groups, can be seen in worker housing, social and 

commercial sites, and institutional sites.

The Framework theme Creating Social Institutions and Movements includes the topics: clubs 

and organizations; reform movements; religious institutions; and recreational activities (NPS 

1996:8). Social and commercial sites and institutional sites show the connection of class and 

conflict. Clubs and organizations offered opportunities for class bonds as well as exclusion of 

other groups. The organization of labor, such as in union halls or private clubs, allowed workers 

or owners to come together to challenge the current work dynamic. Similarly, the forums and 

context provided by reform movements, religious institutions, and even recreational activities 

can be viewed in light of their role and involvement in labor disputes and conflicts. 
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The NPS theme, Expressing Cultural Values, includes the topics: education and intellectual 

currents; visual and performing arts; literature; mass media; architecture, landscape architecture, 

and urban design; and popular and traditional culture (NPS 1996:9). Worker housing, social and 

commercial sites, and institutional sites can embody cultural values related to labor and class and 

conflict. 

Archeologists can study conflicts between different groups and classes by analyzing the physical 

evidence of interactions between different groups, such as material exchanges and distinctions in 

artifact styles. For instance, differences in construction methods and architectural styles may 

indicate class divisions. The type of neighboring structures and the community layout are also 

possible clues to disparities based on the ethnic, racial, and class composition of workers' 

communities. 

Another aspect of workers and work cultures concerns how workers' housing may indicate 

community and social structure, spatial layout, ethnic and class divisions, company policies, 

workers' reactions to industrial labor, cultural styles and trends, and individual or household 

wants and needs. As noted above, the architecture of company housing often closely reflects 

hegemonic company policies in its strict uniformity and simplicity (Landon 1989:41; Mrozowski 

and Beaudry 1989:290). The housing layout and placement in the community may reveal how a 

company would like its working population to behave and whom the company would like its 

workers' to interact with on a daily basis. Private housing provides workers with the opportunity 

to express their own culture, opinions, and thoughts. Workers could use traditional or radical 

architectural styles to express these beliefs and to express their disapproval of company policies 

and industrial labor. 

The framework theme, Shaping the Political Landscape, includes the topics: parties, protests, 

and movements; governmental institutions; military institutions and activities; and political 

ideas, cultures, and theories (NPS 1996:10). Evidence of parties, protests, and movements as 

well as political ideas, culture, and theories can be seen at institutional sites and social and 

commercial sites. Governmental and military institutions and activities can be seen at 

institutional sites.
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This theme focuses on the organization of workers into active groups and unions, and their 

struggle for workers' rights. Sites directly connected to unionization or union leaders are 

important properties for this theme, as are sites related to strikes, protests, and union or antiunion activity. The archeology of workers' communities may also illustrate the conflicts that 

arose between different interests in a labor community. The introduction of unions to company 

towns was often accompanied by conflict between workers and industry leaders as unions argued 

for labor reform involving working conditions and salaries. Industry leaders responded to the 

growing unionization of labor forces by refusing to hire or fire union-affiliated workers and by 

forbidding their workers from having contact with any union up-risers. Considering these 

actions, it is not surprising that a number of labor protest camps formed on the outskirts of 

company towns that forbade unionists (Arnesen et al. 2003). 

This theme also focuses on working-class intellectual life. Beyond the general academic 

education of workers and their families, this theme covers the development of new labor 

practices, technological changes, and instructions on basic workers' rights. Institutional 

structures, such as academic and vocational schools, illustrate the education of workers and their 

families. Instruction in work practices and workers' rights may be more difficult to interpret 

from the material record. Sites connected to known labor reformers, such as the Kate Mullany 

House NHL, may be potential properties that illustrate this in the archeological record. 

Residential properties in communities where changing labor practices occurred may also provide 

some evidence of home instruction in changing labor practices. 

Labor protest camps usually consisted of semi-permanent to impermanent dwellings, as well as 

possible commercial enterprises that supported camp members. Evidence of these communities 

may include the remains of structures and associated waste deposits. Likewise, properties 

associated with significant labor protest leaders, union and protest organizations, or protest 

actions contribute information significant to the topic of labor organization and protest. 

Primarily, the existence of an outlying encampment is a possible indication that labor conflict 

occurred at a company town, as industry leaders would have expelled unionists from their towns. 
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Unionists who were not directly affiliated with the nearby company town may also have chosen 

to settle in the area so that they would have easy access to workers they hoped to convert to 

union membership. In several instances, archeological evidence from labor protest camps or 

other sites may provide evidence of the violence associated with class conflict. In the nineteenth 

century, many industry leaders responded to labor protestors with violent force. The Ludlow 

Tent Colony Site in Las Animas, Colorado (Simmons and Simmons 2008) details such a violent 

response and the resulting destruction. 

The Framework theme Developing the American Economy includes the topics: extraction and 

production; distribution and consumption; transportation and communication; workers and work 

cultures; labor organizations and protests; exchange and trade; governmental policies and 

practices; and economic theory (NPS 1996:11). Class and conflict resulting from worker culture 

and relations can be seen in worker households, infrastructure sites, and industrial worksites as 

well as social and commercial sites and institutional sites. Governmental policies and practices 

can be evident at social and commercial sites and institutional sites. 

The Framework theme Changing Role of the United States in the World Community includes 

the topics: international relations; commerce; expansion and imperialism; and immigration and 

emigration policies (NPS 1996:14). Class and conflict related to immigration and emigration can 

be seen in the policies of various institutions as well as inequities or differing levels of 

participation in various social and commercial properties. 

Labor, Class, and Conflict Research Questions: 

1) What was the relationship between labor and industry and how does material culture 

reflect the way workers responded to industry and industrial relations? How is the site or 

district indicative of regional and/or national labor relations? 

2) Was the relationship between labor and industry in conflict? Does the material record 

reflect the relationship between labor and capital or within laboring groups? Are these 

relationships reflective of broader regional and national trends? 

3) How did national emigration and immigration policies and patterns lead to labor and 

class conflicts or disputes? 
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4) How did educational and intellectual currents, political ideas, cultures, and theories shape 

the relationship between industry and labor at the property? Given that the adoption of 

norms or attention to ideas can strain or support this relationship, does the material 

culture or built environment of the property reflect the nature of these relationships? 

5) How did the processes of extraction and production engender the relations between labor 

and industry, work culture, and class formation, and create tensions? Can the property 

provide important knowledge about these changes? 

6) How do the patterns of consumption and distribution reflect class formation and 

industrial relations? Does the material and spatial evidence at the site or district 

contribute regional or nationally significant knowledge about labor relations and the 

consumption of goods? 

Example How was the relationship between labor and industry in conflict and seen in 

relationships with different institutions, organizations and protests? This research question can 

detail the dynamic and sometimes contested relationship between workers and employers. For 

instance, the archeology of the Ludlow Tent Colony Site documented the material culture of 

striking miners and their families and the dynamics of the strike and its impact, including a battle 

between striking coal miners and the National Guard that led to the destruction of the tent colony 

and the deaths of two women and eleven children. As one of the best preserved labor camps in 

the United States, artifacts from the site have been critical to understanding the effects of striking 

behavior in regards to class and ethnic interactions. Archeologists have examined whether or not 

the camp was segregated along lines of ethnicity, religion, or country of origin. Reflecting upon 

how labor strikes influenced gender roles in labor camps can also be examined in detail from the 

artifacts found in domestic deposits as workers’ domestic sites were traditionally the domain of 

women. Interestingly, researchers hypothesize that women and children were active participants 

with the male miners in developing class consciousness, and aided in unifying support for the 

strike. 

Examining the material record has also been crucial for identifying the material 

conditions that led to strikes during this era in American history. The virtually intact 

archeological record found within the domestic features of the Ludlow Tent Colony Site consists 

of the accumulation of the mundane actions of people within their homes. Analysis of these 
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remains is providing one means to gain a richer, more detailed, and more systematic 

understanding of the everyday reality of Colorado mining families than is available from 

documents of the 1913-1914 strike. Finally, the archeological record has been instrumental in 

defining the specific events that took place within Ludlow Tent Colony on April 20th,1914, the 

day of the battle, massacre, and conflagration. Battlefield archeology has played a significant 

role in determining what actually happened on that day as opposed to what was reported in the 

documentary record. Therefore, Ludlow is a unique example of a site that contributes to the 

broader and nationally significant history of labor relations and labor struggles. 

Communities and Collectives 

Labor archeology sites related to Communities and Collectives includes places where groups or 

combinations of different groups lived, socialized and sometimes labored together. These 

properties may be places built and designed entirely by the management of the properties such as 

is the case with company towns, company boardinghouses, and some work camps. They may 

also be entire districts where workers dwellings may have been, including working class 

neighborhoods, work camps, boardinghouses, bunkhouses and hotels. These places can include 

structures or sites that served as the setting for the development of community identities 

including union halls, social halls or other recreational centers, saloons, and other commercial 

establishments. Overall, the domain looks at the group or community level and is scalable at this 

dimension, but also can represent research questions of regional and national significance. 

Examining comparative literature and broader contexts can help assess the research significance 

of this domain. 

The Framework theme Peopling Places includes the topics: family and the life cycle; health, 

nutrition, and disease; migration from outside and within; community and neighborhood; ethnic 

homelands; and encounters, conflicts, and colonization (NPS 1996:7). Worker households, 

social and commercial sites, and institutional sites can shed light on migration outside and within 

communities and community and neighborhood dynamics. 

The Framework theme Creating Social Institutions and Movements includes the topics: clubs 

and organizations; reform movements; religious institutions; and recreational activities (NPS 
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1996:8). At the community level, social and commercial sites show social organization, 

activities, and movements. Religious institutions at the community level are represented by 

subsequent institutional sites. Parks, clubs, stores, schools, and churches were among the 

numerous social institutions industry leaders constructed and supported. In workers' 

communities in isolated areas, as illustrated by the Cairnbrook Historic District in Pennsylvania, 

companies were even obligated to provide water resources and housing. All of these institutional 

provisions further helped to link labor to workers' lives. 

The framework theme Shaping the Political Landscape includes the topics: parties, protests, 

and movements; governmental institutions; military institutions and activities; and political 

ideas, cultures, and theories (NPS 1996:10). Ideas, movements, and issues can be seen in social 

and commercial sites and institutional sites. 

In order for workers to protect their personal autonomy and rights as laborers, they developed 

unions. These organizations, which slowly developed over time, hoped to give workers a 

measure of protection against industrial policies and practices (Nash 1989). Unions connected 

workers into a larger and more organized network of supporters, but they also provided a social 

connection for laborers. The shared concerns, problems, and goals of laborers united individuals 

after their set workday. Unions also provided workers with social functions and institutions, 

such as special meetings or clubs. As described above, the development of unionization may be 

traced through the study of properties associated with significant labor protest leaders, labor 

protest activity, and union activity. 

The topic "parties, protests, and movements" is well illustrated by properties associated with 

labor protest and the development of unions. Politicians, and thereby political ideas, cultures, 

and theories, were closely connected to workers since consumerism and mass production 

depended on production forces that were satisfied, or at least compliant, with the national 

standards for labor practices. Accordingly, workers, especially after the formation of unions, 

demanded certain national standards and expected politicians to satisfy their needs as public 

representatives. This theme may be more complicated to illustrate archeologically, but 

properties connected to labor protests that influenced political thoughts and actions are useful 
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here. The Ludlow Tent Colony Site, described above, is an excellent example of this type of 

property since the union activity at this site encouraged the definition of methods for resolving 

labor conflicts (Saitta et al. 2005). Participants of a historic event rarely witness more than a few 

incidents associated with the event in question. The day-to-day existence of strikers within 

Ludlow Tent Colony, and the series of documented events that culminated with the tragedy of 

April 20th, 1914 exemplify these problems in interpreting a historical event. Physical evidence 

and spatial patterning contained in the archeological record found within the Ludlow Tent 

Colony Site can assist in resolving some of these issues

The NPS theme, Expressing Cultural Values, includes the topics: education and intellectual 

currents; visual and performing arts; literature; mass media; architecture, landscape architecture, 

and urban design; and popular and traditional culture (NPS 1996:9). Social and commercial sites 

and institutional sites would have shaped or contributed to the cultural values and expressions of 

a community. 

The Framework theme, Developing the American Economy, includes the topics: extraction and 

production; distribution and consumption; transportation and communication; workers and work 

cultures; labor organizations and protests; exchange and trade; governmental policies and 

practices; and economic theory (NPS 1996:11). Social and commercial sites and institutional 

sites can offer a broad picture of work cultures, distribution and consumption, exchange and 

trade, and economic theory. 

Economic theory and governmental policies and practices can be applied to a number of 

properties. These properties may be related to changes in economic theory or changes in policies 

and practices instituted or guided by the government. Sites connected to government work 

programs such as the WPA and CCC also provide excellent possibilities for studying the 

interaction between government and labor activity at the community level. 
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Communities and Collectives Research Questions: 

1) How did industry and the industrial mode of production affect communities and 

neighborhoods? How are the effects of production part of regional and/or national 

trends? 

2) How were communities created and affected by patterns of migration and immigration 

related to industry? Can the site or district demonstrate the significant effects of the 

movement of people to the community as a result of work? How does the dynamic of 

regional demographics reflect national trends in the movement of peoples across borders 

or between regions for the purpose of work? 

3) What was the relationship between clubs and organizations and industry? 

4) At the level of the community or collective, how were societal reform movements started 

and how did they interact with industry? Can the property provide important knowledge 

about these regional and national movements at the community level? 

5) How did cultural values shape the relationship between communities and collectives and 

industry and what were the broad patterns of this relationship? 

6) What was the community and collective dynamic of participation in political parties, 

labor organizations, movements, and protests related to industry? 

7) How were communities shaped by the process of production, extraction and other aspects 

of this process? This question intersects with the labor processes domain focusing on the 

community as a whole. 

8) How did governmental policies towards industry affect communities and groups? How 

can the effects of these policies be seen at the local level? What evidence can the site or 

district provide to understand how these policies were negotiated? 

9) How were patterns of consumption within the community tied to industry and economics 

in the Industrial era? Do these patterns vary across the community and how does this 

variation reflect prevailing regional or national patterning? 

Example How did industry and the industrial mode of production affect communities and 

neighborhoods? This question provides an avenue to understand the wider impact of different 

modes of production. Labor archeology has examined industrial landscapes asking research 

questions regarding settlement composition, design, and density, and the impact of industry, 
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environmental adaptation, and community health. For instance, Beaudry and Mrozowski’s 

(1989c) multidisciplinary studies of the Boott mills complex in the Lowell National Historical 

Park address the community level by examining several sites together. Beaudry (1989, 1993) 

and Mrozowski et al. (1989) produced a broad contextual view of nineteenth-century mill 

operatives’ lives. Through the comparison of sites, they were able to examine everyday 

conditions through multiple, but connected, layers of archeological evidence that included 

specific artifacts, features, and their analysis. These analyses link examinations of public health, 

hygiene, landscape, and corporate paternalism across the hierarchy of the community providing a 

much more detailed assessment of the lives of mill workers, their interrelation, and the 

differences between them. Based on this detailed and thorough examination, the Boott mills 

complex can provide significant information on the dynamic between industry and the 

community and, in the process, illuminate regional and national industrial trends. 

Evaluation Criteria 

Information contained in the theme study is to be used to evaluate the significance of labor 

archeology properties as National Historic Landmarks or for inclusion on the National Register 

of Historic Places. Labor archeology properties, represented by archeological sites and districts, 

considered for National Register nomination must possess integrity of location, design, setting, 

materials, workmanship, feeling, and association at national, state, or local levels of significance 

relating to one or more of the Criteria. National Historic Landmark Criteria reflect a similar but 

more rigorous evaluative framework and threshold for properties possessing the potential to 

contain information of national significance. As set forth in 36 CFR 65.4, properties meeting 

these Criteria: 

1. Are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to, and are identified 

with, or that outstandingly represent, the broad national patterns of United States history 

and from which an understanding and appreciation of those patterns may be gained; or 

2. Are associated importantly with the lives of persons nationally significant in the history 

of the United States: or 

3. Represent some great idea or ideal of the American people; or 
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4. Embody the distinguishing characteristics of an architectural type specimen exceptionally 

valuable for a study of a period, style or method of construction, or that represent a 

significant, distinctive and exceptional entity whose components may lack individual 

distinction; or 

5. Are composed of integral parts of the environment not sufficiently significant by reason 

of historical association or artistic merit to warrant individual recognition but collectively 

compose an entity of exceptionally historical or artistic significance, or outstandingly 

commemorate or illustrate a way of life or culture; or 

6. Have yielded or may be likely to yield information of major scientific importance by 

revealing new cultures, or by shedding light upon periods of occupation over large areas 

of the United States. Such sites are those that have yielded, or which may be reasonably 

expected to yield data affecting theories, concepts, and ideas to a major degree. 

Labor archeology properties, like other archeological resources, are usually nominated under 

Criterion 6. To be designated an NHL, a property must contain information that is “expected to 

yield data affecting theories, concepts, and ideas to a major degree.” Other Criteria can also be 

applicable. Stated briefly, nominations made under Criterion 6 must address two questions: 

1. What information is the site likely to yield? 

2. Is the information nationally significant? 

To prepare a nomination and assess the significance of a property, researchers should follow the 

steps outlined in the National Register of Historic Places Bulletin: How to Prepare National 

Historic Landmark Nominations (NPS 1999) and briefly mentioned here in the context of this 

theme study. 

To begin, the researcher needs to find, cite, and justify the qualifying NHL Criteria for the 

property or properties. To do this, the researcher should use Table 1 to identify the relevant 

research domains and Framework themes and topics. Next, the researcher should select the 

applicable research questions the property can address and/or pose additional research questions 

that have not been conceptualized before. This step necessitates an outline of the historical 

background of the property and the formation of a defensible research design that includes a 
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solid overview of current theory, concepts, and ideas, especially in labor archeology and labor 

history. 

From this context, the researcher should be able to compare the data or likely data from the 

property with other known resources and the knowledge base. From this comparison, the 

property's relationship to this knowledge base and the relevant Criteria can be detailed. This 

context is further crucial to assessing the significance of the property at the local, regional, or 

national level. At the national level, properties should be exceptionally important when 

compared to other properties. Thus, the relative merit of the significance and integrity of the 

property should be compared to other similar, potentially nominated properties. 

Archeological properties can meet Criteria 1 through 5 in addition to Criteria 6. Inclusion of 

additional applicable Criteria increases the strength of an assessment and subsequent nomination. 

For instance, the Ludlow Tent Colony Site was designated an NHL for labor archeology under 

Criteria 1 and 6. Not only did Ludlow yield archeological data affecting theories, concepts, and 

ideas to a major degree, the property also was associated with events that have made a significant 

contribution to, and are identified with, or that outstandingly represent the broad national 

patterns of United States history and from which an understanding and appreciation of those 

patterns may be gained. 

Each Criteria requires its own justification. Linking the Criteria to the research domains and 

Framework themes and topics allows researchers to flesh out the significant aspects and elements 

of each Criteria. In the case of Ludlow’s NHL nomination, the strength and association of these 

Criteria can be seen in the nomination’s discussion of the four applicable Framework themes and 

five applicable Framework topics (see Simmons and Simmons 2008). Applying the research 

domains of this theme study, the Ludlow NHL addresses three out of the four research domains. 

Once again, the overall strength of a nomination is contingent on delineating the relevant Criteria 

and the argument and research supporting that selection.

National Historic Landmark Exceptions 

Ordinarily, cemeteries, birthplaces, graves of historical figures, properties owned by religious 

institutions or used for religious purposes, structures that have been moved from their original 
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locations, reconstructed historic buildings and properties that have achieved significance within 

the past fifty years are not eligible for designation. If such properties fall within the following 

categories they may, nevertheless, be found to qualify: 

Exception 1: A religious property deriving its primary national significance from architectural or 

artistic distinction or historical importance; or 

Exception 2: A building removed from its original location but which is nationally significant 

primarily for its architectural merit, or for association with persons or events of transcendent 

importance in the nation's history and the association consequential; or 

Exception 3: A site of a building or structure no longer standing but the person or event 

associated with it is of transcendent importance in the nation's history and the association 

consequential; or 

Exception 4: A birthplace, grave or burial if it is of a historical figure of transcendent national 

significance and no other appropriate site, building, or structure directly associated with the 

productive life of that person exists; or 

Exception 5: A cemetery that derives its primary national significance from graves of persons of 

transcendent importance, or from an exceptionally distinctive design or an exceptionally 

significant event; or 

Exception 6: A reconstructed building or ensemble of buildings of extraordinary national 

significance when accurately executed in a suitable environment and presented in a dignified 

manner as part of a restoration master plan, and when no other buildings or structures with the 

same association have survived; or 

Exception 7: A property primarily commemorative in intent if design, age, tradition, or symbolic 

value has invested it with its own national historical significance; or 

Exception 8: A property achieving national significance within the past 50 years if it is of 

extraordinary national importance. 
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Evaluation Standards: NRHP Criteria 

Any successful NHL nomination also will meet NRHP Criteria. A site ineligible for listing as an 

NHL may still meet the Criteria to be listed on the NRHP. The National Historic Preservation 

Act of 1966, as amended, outlines four Criteria under which a historic or prehistoric site could be 

qualified for listing on the NRHP. These are listed in 36 CFR 60: 

The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archeology, and culture is present 

in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, 

setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and: 

A. that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad 

pattern of our history; or 

B. that are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or 

C. that embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period or method of construction, or 

that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a 

significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; 

or 

D. that have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or 

history. 

Archeological site eligibility is normally considered under Criterion D, the potential to yield 

information important to prehistory and history. Determining what information is important in 

history can be accomplished only through explicit arguments linking the site(s) and cultural 

resources in question to theoretical and substantive questions and issues of archeological or 

historical knowledge. 

Integrity is related to a property's ability to provide sufficiently intact data that yields or is 

expected to yield information significant to the historic context or theme. The National Register 

Criteria requires that properties retain integrity of location, design, setting, materials 

workmanship feeling, and association. Archeological properties are not expected to recall the 

physical image of an event, person, process, or construction technique. With archeological 

properties though, natural and cultural processes are likely to affect the integrity of the site. 
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Therefore, the integrity of archeological properties is assessed by the site's potential ability to 

provide data for research questions (NPS 1997:46). 

The same characteristics that define National Register requirements for integrity apply for NHL 

integrity: location, design, setting materials workmanship, feeling, and association (NPS 

1999:36-37). Furthermore, to assess integrity the researcher must "l) define the essential 

physical features that must be present to a high degree... 2) determine whether the essential 

physical features are apparent enough to convey the property's significance; and 3) compare the 

property with similar properties in the nationally significant theme" (NPS 1999:37). 

Specifically for archeological properties, which fall under Criterion 6, the integrity is based on 

the property's "professionally demonstrated intactness" of deposits and features to the extent that 

they can address nationally significant research questions (NPS 1999:37). Integrity applies to the 

level of preservation or quality of information, but it is important to note that due to the 

complexity of the archeological record, integrity should be a relative measure dependent on the 

historical context (Little et al. 2000:36-37). 

Evaluating Properties for Inclusion as NHLs of Labor Archeology. 

To summarize, for a property to meet the Criteria of a National Historic Landmark under the 

Labor Archeology Theme Study, it must reasonably be expected to yield data affecting theories, 

concepts, and ideas to a major degree in regards to the formation, transformation, or continuance 

of major social aspects of labor in America leading to or throughout the Industrial period, 

roughly from the mid-eighteenth into the twentieth century and be at least 50 years old. Such 

sites are those which have yielded, or which may reasonably be expected to yield, data that is 

highly relevant to the research questions and domains outlined in this study. 

When assessing NHL or NRHP significance, it is important to note how a property can 

contribute important information. This can only be done through the development of explicit 

statements detailing the kinds of information that are available in addition to the integrity of this 

information for the specific property or district. NRHP or NHL nominations are research 

designs and syntheses, and not listings of physical attributes or general research questions. 
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This theme study is meant to help frame and assess these research questions and their 

significance. A property should have integrity to yield data affecting theories, concepts, and 

ideas to a major degree and yield or likely to yield nationally significant information. In order to 

establish the national significance of an archeological resource, it must be demonstrated how the 

data has made or will make a major contribution to the existing body of information. The 

discussion of the property must include important research questions on labor archeology of the 

Industrial era which can be answered by the data contained in the property. 

G. Geographic Boundaries 

Geographical data defines the boundaries of an area in which the properties for a multiple 

property group exist or are likely to exist. For the purposes of the National Register and NHLs, 

the boundary for labor archeology properties is the United States and its territories, such as 

Guam and Puerto Rico. 

H. Summary of Identification and Evaluation Methods 

Evaluation Methods and Examples 

Potentially eligible NHL sites meeting the Criteria set by this theme study were taken from the 

National Historic Landmark list and the National Register of Historic Places listing. These 

properties were evaluated with reference to the themes proposed by this study: Labor Processes, 

Labor and Identity, Labor, Class, and Conflict, and Communities and Collectives. The 

properties serve as examples for assessing the significance of labor archeology properties. 

To determine which properties might exist that illustrate nationally significant data in labor 

archeology, a review of properties in the NRHP and NHLs was conducted in an earlier draft of 

this theme study by David Gadsby and Theresa Solury. No properties were considered if they 

were not already listed, with one exception for the Chinese Camp in Tuolumne County, 

California. Considering the scope and scale of the National Register, it was necessary to limit 

the properties reviewed. The potential properties selected for review were listed under Criterion 

D for their archeological information potential and had "industry" as an area of significance. 

There were 423 properties in the National Register listed through 1996 that met these two 

requirements. Because of the inconsistency in nominations listing areas of significance beyond 
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"archeology," it is possible that other listed properties may be good candidates for NHL 

designation. From the 423 properties reviewed, a number were chosen for discussion in this 

document for several specific reasons. A full list of all the properties originally reviewed for this 

report follows as Appendix B. 

It is important to bear in mind that the information in this document is designed to serve as a

guideline for reviewing archeological properties associated with labor archeology. Each 

property must be judged individually and as such, a property is not immediately guaranteed 

National Register or NHL acceptance if it meets the suggested requirements in this document. 

The two most important factors for the selection of properties are quality and content. Each 

property contains intact archeological material that appears to be in excellent to good condition

and is related to a significant moment or theme. The properties described were selected in an

attempt to provide as comprehensive a coverage of issues and distribution as possible. Although 

using a limited database places some constraints on the possible kinds of specific property types, 

they represent most non-Register and non-Landmark properties as well. It is possible that there 

are other property types present that were not discussed. It is also important to acknowledge the 

potential significance of commerce properties, which have not been reviewed here to date. 

Errors or generalizations in the listing of some properties on the National Register also must be 

considered in this instance. As such, related properties may not have been reviewed but this is a 

difficult oversight to overcome as each property on the National Register and the NHL survey 

would need to be reviewed individually to account for errors or generalizations.

As mentioned above, the integrity of a property was also an important factor in its selection. 

What constituted the level of integrity was determined by a property's ability or potential to yield 

information important to research questions addressed at the site. Most nominations contained a

clear discussion of the property’s integrity that simplified the review. The uniqueness of a 

property and its connection to a historic context are other important factors in its selection. The

properties not discussed in this document were excluded for a number of reasons. Primarily, the 

properties reviewed during research that were not selected for discussion in this document failed 

to contain either a strong archeological record with good integrity or evidence of workers' lives. 

Other properties contained all the necessary elements, but were not related to significant 
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moments or themes in history. In some instances, the National Register database listed

properties as related to archeology and industry, but the archeology and the industry were

unrelated to one another. An example of this occurrence is Winehaven in Contra Costa County,

California, which is a property containing an early twentieth-century winery but significant for 

its archeology at a prehistoric Native American habitation site (Winehaven Historical Study 

Committee 1978). 

Other properties do not have enough research or information to be adequately evaluated 

according to the NHL Criteria For instance, the Antioch Potash Plants in Sheridan County, 

Nebraska, is a reviewed National Register property that was rejected for further consideration as 

an NHL at this time because it lacked sufficient data. Fifteen companies organized in the United 

States to extract potash from alkali lakes during World War I as the nation was primarily 

dependent on Germany to supply this agricultural nutrient (Jensen 1979:8.1). Five companies 

composed the Antioch Potash Plants between 1916 and 1918 (Jensen 1979:7.1). The American 

potash market declined in 1918, causing the plants to temporarily close. These plants were 

reopened in 1919, but only operated for another five months when Germany began selling 

affordable potash again (Jensen 1979:8.2). Ten of these companies were in Nebraska, and 

except for the Antioch plants, the physical evidence of this industry has been almost completely 

destroyed. Homes for workers, primarily one-to two-room shanties equipped with steam-heat, 

electric light, and plumbing, are said to be situated nearby. In the 1920s, the shanties were 

dismantled or moved. At the same time, the plants were torn down to salvage the structural steel, 

brick, and other reusable materials. All machinery was sold for scrap (Jensen 1979:7.3). 

As the above account indicates, a strong history of the development and structure of the Antioch 

Potash Plants exists and suggests a good potential for archeological remains for this understudied 

property type. The plant is in a state of visible ruins, but the Antioch Potash Plants’ nomination 

indicates no credible evidence that intact buried cultural sources connected to workers' housing 

or other activities remains. While documentary sources state the existence and describe the 

quality of worker housing, researchers have been unable to confirm their presence at this time. 

Because of this absence, which eliminates much of the potential for information on workers' 

lives, Antioch Potash Plants was not considered for further consideration as an NHL at this time. 
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The Black Diamond Mines in Contra Costa County, California, is another example of a National 

Register property currently rejected for further consideration as an NHL because of a lack of 

national significance. The Black Diamond Mines is a district covering a region prospected for 

coal in the mid-1850s. Though the district originally formed around coal mining, commercial 

silica sand mining became the primary industry in the area during the early-twentieth century 

(Praetzellis 1991:7.0). Five towns rose around the mines and continued to be populated until the 

mines closed in the early twentieth century. Overall, the integrity of the site is considered very 

good, and archeologists have conducted some sporadic excavations at the site between 1979 until 

1986 (Praetzellis 1991:8.15). The Black Diamond Mines are potentially important for their role 

in the westward expansion of the United States and for the cultural adaptations and interactions 

between various ethnic groups represented at the mines. While this district appears to be a likely 

candidate for inclusion on the National Register, its national significance is questionable. This 

property, while in very good condition and representative of an unusual ethnic history for 

California, is not unique on a national level and contributes more to a regional level of 

significance. For this reason, the Black Diamond Mines will not be considered for further 

consideration as a NHL. 

 

While both the Antioch Potash Plants and the Black Diamond Mines can provide information on 

the structure and organization of workspaces they currently do not show strong potential to

reveal nationally significant information on workers' lives and individual activity. Properties 

best suited for labor archeology investigations contain domestic remains in addition to those of 

workspaces. While the presence of worker housing is not necessary at each property examined, 

it is a helpful component since it often reflects the greatest personal impression a worker or a 

worker’s family leaves in the material record of industry. 

A Sample of Potential National Historic Landmarks 

The following sample sites and districts represent properties that appear likely to be eligible 

National Historic Landmarks under the Labor Archeology Theme Study. These properties are 

highlighted to provide researchers a guide to nominating nationally significant sites using this 

theme study. These sites do not represent all of the potential sites that may be applicable but 
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serve as a guide for nominating nationally significant labor archeology sites. As of February 

2014, only one archeological site has been nominated based on labor archeology, the Ludlow 

Tent Colony Site. This example and a sample of potentially eligible archeological sites and 

districts are provided below. 

Appendix A contains a list of sites selected as potential NHLs in an earlier draft of this report 

while a full list of the properties reviewed for that earlier draft follows as Appendix B. Appendix 

C lists potentially relevant Multiple Property Submission (MPS) studies that can be used in 

conjunction with this theme study to address specific industrial properties. 

Lowell National Historical Park, Massachusetts 

Lowell National Historical Park, Massachusetts, is an exemplary example of a district containing 

data on the establishment of industry and the formation of a built environment reflecting the 

social relations connected to that industry. Thus the district contains archaeological resources 

capable of addressing the research domains of Labor Processes and Labor and Identity. The 

creation of Lowell National Historical Park in 1978 acknowledged Lowell's significant 

contribution to the American Industrial Revolution (NPS 2008). The city and its textile mills and 

infrastructure represent the first large-scale planned industrial city in American history, 

structuring work as well as home life. Lowell served as a model for American industry for much 

of the nineteenth century (Mrozowksi 2006). The Lowell Locks and Canals Historic District, 

which includes the canals, their locks, and mills, is already designated as a NHL. 

Lowell can contribute to the Labor Processes domain. In the early years of this mill company 

town, industry operators supplied workers with housing in local boardinghouses constructed and 

maintained by the mill company. Boardinghouse operators leased their establishments from the 

mill company, and as leasers they were obliged to follow company regulations unless they 

wanted to risk losing their operation (Mrozowski and Beaudry 1987:156). As such, the rules for 

boardinghouse residents were fairly uniform throughout company holdings. Rules against noncompany residents, the consumption of alcohol on the premises, or drunken and disorderly 

behavior by residents were common rules for these housing arrangements. In later years, many 

of the boardinghouses became tenements. 
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The archaeological resources at Lowell can also detail the interaction of labor and identity. At 

Lowell, workers preferred to live in tenements instead of the boardinghouses since they could 

have a greater control over their personal lives in these establishments (Dutton 1989:88). 

Residents could furnish tenements as they chose, prepare the foods they desired, and live with a 

moderate increase in behavioral freedom. Further study of the Lowell workers' housing may 

provide information about how company policies affected the lifestyles of residents in both 

establishments and how residents responded to labor changes and industry practices in their 

material culture and consumption habits. The archeology of Lowell also can illuminate the 

changing ethnic and gender identity of the workforce. 

Excavations at Lowell (see Beaudry and Mrozowski 1989c) have demonstrated the site has the 

potential to meet at least NHL Criteria 6. The excavations recovered nationally significant data 

that exemplifies the evolution of industrial production, corporation control, and their effects on 

the everyday life of workers and their families. One brief example of this type of data, out of the 

many varieties recovered, is the evidence of the impact of industrialization on personal hygiene 

found during the excavations. Working in the mills was very dirty. The processes involved in 

making cloth released clouds of lint and other materials that stuck to the body, which was often 

covered in sweat and machine grease. Considering the lack of facilities discovered during 

excavation, it would have been difficult to keep one’s clothes and body clean. Artifacts related 

to personal grooming were found throughout the boarding house excavations and included 

combs, cosmetic and cologne containers. These luxuries were probably prized possessions that 

helped with personal hygiene. Their recovery sheds light on the different strategies, individual 

and communal, used to mitigate the depersonalizing experience of working in the mills. 

In the context of repetitive and anonymous industrial work and low wages, the particular 

individual choices connected to personal adornment found during the excavations at Lowell take 

on a particular significance for understanding the development of gender identity. Beaudry and 

Mrozowski (2001:123) suggest that the particular characteristics of the many decorative hair 

combs, brooches and buttons are significant for more than their functional role but rather for 

their capacity to reflect “the active process of the construction of selfhood and of identity”. The 
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items recovered revealed a penchant for costume jewelry among the young female textile 

workers, which the researchers suggest reflects a self-conscious expression of working class 

identity. In some cases, however, jewelry consisted of less expensive black glass versions of 

more expensive jet jewelry popular among the middle-class women of the time (Mrozowski 

2001:123). These items, on the other hand, express middle class aspirations among the workers 

and perhaps an expression of their increased capacities for earning power (Mrozowksi 2001:123-

125). Collected in broadly patterned samples these particular items contribute significant 

understandings to how individual choices are amalgamated into collective movements of identity 

formation. Thus, the data can contribute significant important information on the research 

domains of Labor Processes and Labor and Identity. 

Sloss Furnace, Birmingham, Alabama 

The Sloss Furnace is an example of a National Historic Landmark that is a potentially eligible 

property based on labor archeology. The complex was erected in 1881 and 1882 and developed 

over time producing cast and pig iron. Remaining in operation until 1970, the site represents 

post-Civil War efforts to industrialize the South and presents evidence of the intense economic 

competition with the already-industrialized North. This unique example of competition and 

attempts to modernize can illustrate the Labor Processes domain. 

The domain of Labor and Identity is illustrated by the Furnace’s workforce. Unlike industries in 

the North at this time, African Americans made up a large part of the labor pool (Adams 

1978:8.1). Archeological evidence has the potential to document the experience of postbellum 

life for African Americans in the context of industry. The archeological record of the industry 

documents the racial dynamics and racial hierarchy of the Furnace. The preservation of intact 

buildings and mining remains indicates the likely preservation of substantial archeological 

information. The Furnace property has integrity and would be potentially eligible under 

Criterion 6. The Sloss Blast Furnace would have the archeological potential to contribute 

significantly to the research domains of Labor Processes and Labor and Identity. 
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Fayette, Delta, Michigan 

The town of Fayette in Delta, Michigan, is a post-Civil War charcoal iron-smelting company 

town established and operated by the Jackson Iron Company from the middle to the late 

nineteenth century (Brooks-Miller et al. 1996:7.1). Originally, the town contained industrial, 

residential, commercial, and administrative structures. Today, the town is well-preserved with 

the remains of the furnace complex and the associated iron-smelting operation, commercial and 

administrative buildings, residences, and other associated buildings still standing. 

The size of the town allows for a broad examination of the Community and Collectives domain. 

Fayette is divided into four distinct areas. The industrial area centers around the remains of the 

furnace complex and also includes the remains of ten conical brick charcoal kilns, a dolomite 

lime kiln, a dolomite quarry, piling rows from wooden docks, and railroad features (BrooksMiller et al. 1996:7.4-7.5). Next to the industrial area is the administrative and commercial area. 

This area contains the remains of buildings, building foundations, demolished buildings and 

structures with no associated above ground features, and slag deposits used for road fill (BrooksMiller et al. 1996:7.5). 

The residential area is the largest component of Fayette. This area contains the remains of 

houses, privies, the company sawmill, and pilings from docks with sheds (Brooks-Miller et al. 

1996:7.5). A second residential area was occupied by the less skilled workers in Fayette. 

Archeologists have identified the sites of seven houses, though no visible, aboveground remains 

are present. Other features in the district include additional housing, the local school district, an 

oval racetrack, outside commercial structures, religious structures, and a cemetery (BrooksMiller et al. 1996: 7.7-7.10). 

Archeologists have studied the residential and commercial life through limited excavations, but 

they have not studied the industrial remains to any serious extent. Together the area has the 

potential to document many facets of the company town and their interrelation. Detailing the 

domains of Labor Processes and Labor and Identity, the archeological remains of this district can 

potentially illustrate aspects of iron-processing techniques, and exchange and trade in a company 

town. It can also provide significant information about workers and work culture of the 
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nineteenth century. The intact remains of worker housing and the presence of residential areas 

divided by class have the potential to reveal information on the daily lives of workers, the 

formation of communities, and the interaction between different class groups. Fayette can meet 

Criterion 6 and can contribute to the research domains of Labor Processes, Labor and Identity, 

and Community and Collectives. 

Chinese Mining Camp Archeological Site in Idaho County, Idaho

An excellent example of a workers' community that displays evidence of ethnic divisions and 

conflicts is the Chinese Mining Camp Archeological Site. The Chinese Mining Camp 

Archeological Site in Idaho County, Idaho, is part of the Chinese Sites in the Warren Mining 

District MPS. Although White miners officially organized it in 1862, Chinese workers primarily 

occupied this site from 1870 to 1910, since the local government prohibited the Chinese from 

legally mining in the district until 1869 (Elliott 1994:8.1). After this time, the government 

allowed the Chinese to work on leased operations, though they would not allow them to purchase 

any land. Between 1870 and 1900 at least five separate Chinese mining companies monopolized 

gravel placer operations in the Warren District (Elliott 1994:8.1). The population in the district 

fluctuated seasonally, but the Chinese were the dominant ethnic group in the area during these 

peak mining years (Elliott 1994:8.2). 

Archeologists from the University of Idaho in Moscow excavated 20 percent of the Chinese 

Mining Camp over a four-year period from 1989 to 1992. Their excavations show data that can 

address both the Labor and Identity and Community and Collectives domains. They have 

identified several structural ruins and many mining features in the camp. Archeologists have 

also found thousands of artifacts that are commonly associated with Chinese mining camps in the 

Pacific West, such as specific kitchen utensils and opium bottles. Imported Asian goods indicate 

the different consumption habits of the Chinese from the American miners who worked in the 

area. The Chinese-styled terraced gardens found at this site suggest different food procurement 

methods for miners. Ethnic differences in mining techniques are also visible in the camp tool 

and feature remains. Researchers can identify the different mining techniques, community 

planning, building traditions, and building uses in connection with a strong Chinese heritage, 
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along with the interrelationship between Chinese and Euro-American miners (Elliott 1994:7.2-

7.3, 8.2-8.3). 

The remains of housing, tools, food, and other examples of material culture demonstrate cultural 

divisions and differences and have the potential to provide information on the interaction of 

different ethnic groups and the effect of governmental policies and practices associated with 

immigration and immigrants on their lives. The archeological remains from this site illustrate 

ethnic differences in nineteenth-century work cultures at mining properties and have the potential 

to address questions pertaining to the research domains of Labor and Identity and Community 

and Collectives and thus can meet Criterion 6. 

Chinese Camp, Tuolumne County, California 

A similar property, Chinese Camp, California, is another example illustrating ethnic differences 

in work cultures. Chinese Camp is a small scale, unincorporated community in the western part 

of Tuolumne County, California (Bloomfield et al. 1994:VI.1). During the late 1840s when gold 

was discovered in the area, a number of mining camps sprung up across the countryside as 

miners followed rumors of great discoveries. Europeans and other mining sponsors brought 

Chinese laborers into Tuolumne County as a steady supply of cheap labor (Bloomfield et al. 

1994:VI.2). Chinese miners settled at Chinese Camp after being collectively forced out of or 

abandoning nearby Campo Salvado, the site they were contracted to work. 

Like the previous example, the Chinese Camp illustrates the research domain of Labor Processes 

and Labor and Identity as well as Labor, Class, and Conflict. While researchers have not 

excavated within this district as of 1993, a survey report of the area was prepared. The survey 

identified thirteen archeological sites representing residences, commercial structures and 

districts, mining features, ethnic activity areas (specifically the site of the "Tong War", a small 

battle fought between two opposing Chinese groups), a water works, social activity centers, and 

a cemetery (Bloomfield et al. 1994:IV.4). The surface survey also identified a number of 

artifacts connected to the Chinese miners that illustrate different ethnic groups and may suggest 

trade patterns among the miners and larger trade centers. The data can detail exchanges and 
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trade in labor communities and the differences in goods used by different ethnic groups at the 

camp, and the work cultures of nineteenth-century Chinese and non-Chinese miners. 

The archeological remains of this district illustrate gold extraction activities and techniques, 

particularly the differences in mining techniques between Chinese and non-Chinese miners and 

can illustrate Labor Processes in mining operations. This district may also illustrate the role 

Chinese immigrants played in the formation of community and national laws, attitudes, and 

opinions. Chinese Camp thus may contribute to the research domains of Labor Processes, Labor, 

Class, and Conflict, and Labor and Identity and can meet Criterion 6. 

Buxton Historic Townsite in Monroe, Iowa

The Buxton Historic Townsite in Monroe, Iowa, also illustrates ethnic and class divisions and 

conflict in work cultures, but relates to the African-American experience in the Midwest. 

Buxton developed out of a need for Consolidated Coal Company owners to create a town site 

closer to unexhausted coal resources during the late-nineteenth century (Lufkin 1983:8.2). The 

company constructed a large number of identical houses for its workers and brought commercial 

and public ventures into the community (Lufkin 1983:7.1-7.2, 8.2). Buxton's most unique 

feature as a late nineteenth to early-twentieth-century coal mining town was its large AfricanAmerican population (Lufkin 1983:7.1). 

David Gradwohl and Nancy Osborn excavated in Buxton in the early 1980s and identified the 

types of remains available in the district. These types include the existing remains of buildings 

and associated features, evidence of transportation networks, portions of the centralized water 

control facilities, portions of the centralized downtown heating and sanitation system, vegetative 

evidence of gardens, garbage dumps, scattered refuse, and a cemetery (Lufkin 1983:7.2-7.3). 

Buxton Historic Townsite can contribute to the issue of ethnic and class divisions and conflicts 

with its remains from a rare mixed-ethnicity company town, and thus is potentially significant 

under Criterion 6 under the domains of Labor Identity and Labor, Class, and Conflict. Unlike 

many other ethnically divided towns, historic accounts indicate that Buxton was an ethnic utopia, 

in which all nationalities and ethnic groups had an equal opportunity to advance socially and 
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economically. The archeological remains of this district illustrate coal extraction and processing 

techniques, exchanges and trade in a company owned town, and can contribute to an 

understanding of the workers and work culture of early twentieth-century coal mining. 

Archeological remains from this site may also reflect differences in the material consumption 

habits and company treatment of different ethnic groups in the community, helping to enrich our 

understanding of, or otherwise, complicate historic accounts of the ethnic equality that presided 

in the town. 

Hope Mills Historic District in Cumberland, North Carolina 

The Hope Mills Historic District in Cumberland, North Carolina, reflects changes in work 

practices that accompanied the development and institution of industrialism with its associated 

technological changes. Hope Mills Historic District contains the remains of an industrial village 

based around textile mills established before and after the Civil War. During the Civil War, nine 

textile mills operated here to supply Confederate troops with fabrics. Union troops burned eight 

of the nine mills during the war. After the war, a northern prospector rebuilt the mills and 

subsequently a southern company bought the property and ran the mills in competition with 

northern enterprises. At least one mill was still in operation in the 1980s (Jasperse 1985:8.3-8.7). 

The remains of the district include industrial, residential, commercial, and religious structures 

(Jasperse 1985:7.1). Researchers have conducted no archeological excavations at this site to 

date, but the potential of the district to contain significant intact deposits is very good. 

Researchers have uncovered documents and maps accounting for the presence and location of 

industrial and residential structures and buildings that are no longer visible and predate the Civil 

War destruction of the mill town (Jasperse 1985:7.2). Other structures, buildings, and 

landscapes dating before and after the Civil War are standing intact or in ruins. 

The district is significant since it contains the sites of both an antebellum cotton mill and New 

South cotton mills (Jasperse 1985:8.1). Hope Mills Historic District may be able to contribute to 

the research domain of Labor Processes and has the potential to meet Criterion 6. The 

archeological remains of this district may illustrate the transition of southern industries from preto-post Civil War practices, including changing industry practices, standards, and technologies 
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from a small scale work force to an industrialized system with wage laborers. The remains of 

buildings, structures, and the overall layout of the community, along with the remains from 

machinery and equipment, are helpful in illustrating this theme. 

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in Jefferson County, West Virginia 

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in Jefferson County, West Virginia, has received 

significant amounts of archeological attention detailing its long industrial history that can detail 

the research domains of Labor Processes; Labor and Identity; Labor, Class, and Conflict; and 

Community and Collectives. For instance, the Labor Processes and Labor, Class, and Conflict 

domains are applicable regarding the John Hall's Rifle Works and the US Armory which 

introduced factory discipline to Harpers Ferry in the early-nineteenth century along with new 

technology associated with an early assembly line system. Workers at the armory and the rifle 

works were resistant to the adoption of industrialized labor practices and technology since they 

viewed wage laborers as mere machine tenders (Lucas and Shackel 1994; Shackel 1996). 

Workers resisted the new work discipline in a variety of ways, the most noteworthy of which 

was to ignore regulations over behavior. 

In their consumption habits, most workers responded to changing labor practices by using 

commercial products over homemade products. The increased social value of commercial goods 

encouraged many to adopt this consumption pattern, though archeologists at Harpers Ferry have 

uncovered evidence for some contradictions in workers’ consumption habits (Lucas and Shackel 

1994; Shackel 1996). The remains of at least one worker’s house have contained a number of 

ceramics that were unfashionable after the adoption of the factory discipline in Harpers Ferry. 

Paul Shackel (1996:111-145) offered two possible interpretations of these ceramic deposits in his 

text. One interpretation is that workers at this site may have consciously chosen to use an 

unfashionable table setting as a form of silent protest to the new labor practices. Workers may 

have viewed the older style of goods as hallmarks of a time when the artisan method of 

production was still in place, a time when workers still viewed themselves as important and 

integral parts of the production process. The second interpretation is that under the new wage 

labor system, workers received less pay and were less economically capable of keeping up with 
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society's fashions in commercial goods. Either interpretation represents an instance where 

workers' lifestyles were affected by industry changes and possible reactions to these changes. 

Addressing the domains of Community and Collectives and Labor Identity, work by Matt Palus 

and Paul Shackel (2006) at the island community of Virginius Island has documented the 

relationship between changes in management and the daily lives of workers and their 

community. The industry, which shifted between different types of industries and products, also 

moved from a paternalistic management style in the early to the middle of the nineteenth century 

to an absentee form of ownership in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Palus and 

Shackel (2006:xiii) were able to document that the workforce become increasingly deskilled and 

impoverished and detailed a general homogenization of material culture over time. The Harpers 

Ferry National Historical Park possess data that can potential address Criterion 6 and the 

research domains of Labor Processes, Labor and Identity, Labor, Class, and Collectives, and 

Community and Collectives. 

Sunrise City Historic District in the Kenai-Peninsula Borough of Alaska 

Sunrise City Historic District in the Kenai-Peninsula Borough of Alaska can also illustrate the 

effect of labor on workers' and their family’s lives as workers had to adapt to inhospitable living 

and working conditions in order to mine untapped areas. Workers also had to adapt existing 

mining and building technology as well as work practices to this new environment. This district 

contains the remains of a late nineteenth-century mining camp that became the supply center for 

mining in the Sixmile Creek area. Miners first settled Sunrise City in 1895, and continued to 

inhabit it until 1939 (Buzzell 1997:8.1). Though fire, natural erosion processes, and scavenging 

for construction material has damaged the site to an extent, the district contains many 

archeological sites that retain a high degree of integrity (Buzzell 1997:7.9). Researchers divided 

the district into three components: the townsite area, the Point Comfort area, and the sites on the 

east side of the Sixmile Creek. 

Within the townsite area, one partially standing structure (a log cabin) is still present today (as of 

1997). Archeologists and surveyors have identified thirty building foundations (many with root 

cellars), seventeen artifact concentrations, eleven isolated artifacts, two sections of foundation 
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from the tram road, nine features of hand-stacked rocks (which are well-preserved evidence of 

early hand-mining practices), and 175 depressions (Buzzell 1997:7.5-7.6). The Point Comfort 

area contains the Point Comfort Cemetery and part of a tram road foundation (Buzzell 1997:7.7). 

The sites on the east side of the Sixmile Creek are associated with the boom years of Sunrise 

City (Buzzell 1997:7.8). During periods of expansion, newcomers settled on this side of the 

creek. The ruins of three log cabins with partially standing walls, a standing log cache, six cabin 

sites marked by root cellars, and the stone foundation of a cabin compose this area of the district. 

The remains from workers housing and associated material goods illustrate how the isolated and 

often inhospitable environment of Alaska affected workers' daily lives and has the potential to 

answer research questions pertaining to the Labor Process and Community and Collectives 

domains. The semi-permanent to impermanent style of housing and the poor quality of building 

materials reflect the temporary nature of habitation in this area, the inability to obtain good 

quality building materials, and the difficulty in using existing technologies, while the limited 

variation in material goods reflects the isolation of the area. Structural remains from Sunrise 

City will also be useful in determining what type of architectural styles miners used in Alaskan 

mining communities. Technological changes from small scale hand-mining to a larger scale 

machine-mining are probably also detectable here. Thus, Sunrise City Historic District can 

address Criterion 6 and the research domains of Labor Processes and Community and 

Collectives. 

Thurber, Erath, Texas 

The company town of Thurber, located in Erath, Texas, also has an interesting history of union 

activity and labor protest. Thurber was the only bituminous coal mining town in Texas, and as 

such it played a key role in the expansion of the railroad industry in the region. This town was 

also a strict company town with all of the housing, special features, and amenities controlled by 

the town owners. Thurber is an important district for union activities as miners struck here for 

almost a decade in order to receive better working and living conditions, as well as better salaries 

and can detail the Labor, Class, and Conflict domain. Early in Thurber's union history, any 

union affiliated person was kept out of the town, and the owners eventually fenced the town off 

from public access and kept it under militant guard. Strikebreakers were imported into the town, 
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including a large if not exclusively African-American labor force, from around 1888 until 1899 

when striking miners and company management reached agreement (Steinbomer 1979:8.1-8.2). 

Eventually, Thurber became the first all union town in the country (Steinbomer 1979:8.1). Labor 

organization and conflict between different groups share research questions associated with the 

Labor and Identity and Community and Collectives domains. 

Researchers have yet to conduct archeology in Thurber. Survey work has documented ten 

significant standing buildings, a cemetery, two artificial lakes, the foundations from a brick 

plant, and the foundations of hundreds of homes in the district, all of which suggest the good 

potential for archeology in the area (Steinbomer 1979:7.1). The potential for marginal, mining 

protest camps surrounding the townsite is also excellent. As it illustrates the activities of protest 

movements, political ideas, and the changing political environment of late nineteenth and early 

twentieth-century company towns, the research domain of Labor and Identity, Labor, Class, and 

Collectives, and Community and Collectives are applicable and the district has the potential to 

meet Criterion 6. 

Current National Historic Landmarks of Labor Archeology of the Industrial Era 

Ludlow Tent Colony Site, Ludlow, Colorado 

As mentioned earlier, the Ludlow Tent Colony Site represents the only NHL nominated under 

the theme of labor archeology. Forty acres encompassing most of the 1913 to 1914 tent colony 

and the camp’s trash dump are in the nominated area (Simmons and Simmons 2008:61). The 

colony was scene of a battle between National Guard Troops and striking miners in April of 

1914 that led to the death of thirteen people in the camp and a fire that engulfed the colony. The 

Ludlow Massacre was a pivotal event arising from the efforts of workers to improve conditions 

in the mining industry and the broader struggle between management and labor over the 

workplace (Simmons and Simmons 2008:4). 

Having excellent integrity, Ludlow has yielded and is likely to yield information of major 

scientific importance. The archeological resources have the potential to answer national 

significant questions about ethnicity, class interaction, the living conditions of strikers, gender 

roles, and material conditions of striking as well as events of the battle (Simmons and Simmons 
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2008:4). An earlier draft of this theme study suggested, the site as a potential NHL based on the 

Framework themes of Developing the American Economy, Peopling Places, Creating Social 

Institutions and Movements, and Shaping the Political Landscape because it can address the 

following topics: encounters, conflicts, and colonization; reform movements; parties, protest, and 

movements; workers and work culture; and labor organizations and protests. Seen in the light of 

the current version of the theme study, Ludlow addresses the research domains of Labor and 

Identity, Labor, Class, and Conflict, and Community and Collectives. 

As the only currently designated NHL under labor archeology, researchers are strongly 

encouraged to review the Ludlow Tent Colony Site NHL nomination as an example of a 

successful nomination. The nomination is listed under NHL Criteria 1 and 6 (Simmons and 

Simmons 2008). The nationally significant event that led to Ludlow meeting Criterion 1 was the 

assault on the tent colony that led to the deaths of women and children. The significance of this 

event is also supported by a number of other factors including the public’s reaction and the 

event’s subsequent commemorations. The ability of archeology to detail this event and the 

relations and details surround it from a relatively unbiased perspective afforded the property the 

ability to meet Criterion 6, the high potential to yield information of national significance. 

The detailed research framework for Ludlow attempted to address these Criteria with relevant 

research questions linked to the Thematic Framework themes and topics (Simmons and Simmons 

2008:21-22). This attention to the themes and topics allowed them to focus on specific questions 

that could be addressed by the archeological record. In regards to the theme of Peopling Places, 

the researchers asked the questions: “Are the strikers’ and their family members’ ethnicity and 

countries of origin identifiable in the archeological record?” and “Does the internal layout of the 

tent colony reflect segregation along lines of ethnicity, religion, and country of origin?” (Reckner 

2009; Simmons and Simmons 2008:21-22). In regards to the theme of Shaping the Political 

Landscape, researchers asked if the archaeology could confirm or dispute the many different 

highly politicized accounts of the events leading up to the Massacre. Of particular sensitivity in 

this regard were the differing accounts of April 20th, 1914 by the union and subsequent oral 

history and that presented by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s public relations firm which suggested 

that the strikers’ hostile actions instigated these events. 
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Because there is an abundance of conflicting documentary evidence for all of these subjects, 

research was geared towards providing uniquely archaeological perspectives to challenge or 

elaborate upon the sometimes simplified narratives provided by company and union policy, 

media and retrospective oral history. In this case, the archaeology’s capacity to amalgamate 

systematic quantitative analysis and historical documentary evidence is exemplified in the 

manner in which material culture data from multiple sites is made comparable. In this way, 

archaeology exercises systematic methods to answer complex questions. 

In regards to the question of visibility in the record of ethnicity, archaeologist Paul Reckner 

(2009) found that evidence for some distinctive ethnic-associated items cited conspicuously in 

the oral history record were, to some extent, present in the archaeological record such as an 

accordion fragment, religious medallions, and olive oil jars in the case of Italian domestic 

settings (Reckner 2009:471, Simmons and Simmons 2008: 24). These objects in combination 

with other objects with explicit ties to certain ethnic origins, such as a particular Italian-made 

bitters bottle or a medicinal bottle with the Spanish designation “ACEITE MEXICANO,” 

establish that material distinctions between ethnic groups are partially visible in the 

archaeological record (2009:465-468). At the same time, the overall homogeneity of many 

everyday objects such as inexpensive ironstone ceramics suggests that “utilitarian objects crosscut ethnic/national and racial identities, contributing to a common experience of material life in 

the tent colony” (Reckner 2009:479-480). While the evidence of interethnic sharing is not 

documented in the archaeological record, the wide distribution of particular items of everyday 

life marked in the oral histories as playing a major role in this social function such as coffee, tea 

and alcohol-related serving items, musical instruments, and large cuts of meat suggest that the 

means for this kind of sharing was well distributed. In all accounts, such interethnic sharing 

within the constraints of precarious strike conditions played a major role in the development of 

solidarity (Reckner 2009: 479-480). 

A feature representing a shared disposal pit in one area of the camp provided evidence for 

integrated residency of ethnic groups. In comparison to the main disposal area serving the 

majority of the camp, the distinctive pattern of this residential pit suggested it served the habitual 
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use of a particular residential group. A mixture of materials associated with ethnic groups found 

in this pit suggests that groups were, at this geographical scale, not divided by ethnic group 

(Reckner 2009:467-468). Reckner (2009:470) concludes based upon this and other evidence 

that, “integrated residency patterns at Ludlow stand in contrast to the union's official system of 

ethnic representatives, and to housing patterns in the coal camps prior to [the coal company’s] 

forced housing integration programs... the physical landscape of the community was crafted to 

intentionally deny the significance of those differences.” 

In regards to whether the archaeology confirmed, deny, or elaborate upon certain historical 

accounts of the event, the archaeology, even within the limited scope of the sample, produced 

some insights. One major account of the companies contended that tent cellars were used by 

strikers to hold ammunition or as defensive measures. Of the seven cellars excavated, unfired 

ammunition was found in all, with the majority coming from excavated four cellars. Two cellars 

contained quantities of .22 and .30 caliber cartridges. Nearby archaeologists found several .30 

caliber cartridges fired from the same rifle suggesting that the ammunition fired likely came from 

the cellar cache. In this instance, archaeology confirmed the use of the cellars in some cases to 

store ammunition (Simmons and Simmons 2008: 25). At the same time, the presence of 

significant domestic remains in the cellars indicates, in contrast to the suggestion that the 

function of cellars was as a defensive measure, this was far from their exclusive function (Saitta 

et al. 2005). An interesting finding that connects all three research questions cited above is the 

association of the Greek strikers and rifles in the oral history documentation of the camps. The 

recovery of an abundance of ammunition in cellars associated with Italian occupation challenges 

the simplicity of this association (Reckner 2009:471-472). 

The successful utilization of the Thematic Framework to formulate research questions to address 

NHL Criteria makes the Ludlow Tent Colony Site an important example for researchers 

considering compiling a NHL nomination under the theme of Labor Archeology of the Industrial 

Era. The research conducted at the site also provides an innovative methodology for integrating 

the rich documentary record which often accompanies twentieth-century sites in a way which 

utilizes the particular kinds of evidence archaeology produces to great effect. 
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APPENDIX A 

List of Properties Identified as Potential NHLs for Significance to Labor Archeology and 

Associated Themes: 

Sunrise City Historic District, Kenai-Borough Peninsula, Alaska, #97000892: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Extraction 

Workers and work culture 

Expanding Science and Technology: 

Technological applications 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Migration from outside and within 

Community and neighborhood 

Areas of interest: Effect of work and location of workers and Change from hand-mining 

to mechanized-mining 

Chinese Camp, Tuolumne County, California (not NR): 

Developing the American Economy: 

Extraction 

Workers and work culture 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Migration from outside to within 

Community and neighborhood 

Ethnic homelands 

Encounters and conflicts 

Areas of interest: Ethnic and class differences and divisions 

Moore Gulch Chinese Mining Site, Clearwater County, Idaho, #83000285: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Extraction 

Workers and work culture 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Migration from outside to within 

Community and neighborhood 

Ethnic homelands 

Encounters and conflicts 

Areas of interest: Ethnic and class differences and divisions 
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Chinese Mining Camp Archeological Site, Idaho County, Idaho, #94001018: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Extraction and production 

Workers and work culture 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Migration from outside to within 

Community and neighborhood 

Ethnic homelands 

Encounters and conflicts 

Areas of interest: Class and ethnic differences and divisions 

Lower Salmon River Archeological District, Idaho County, Idaho, #86002170: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Extraction and production 

Workers and work culture 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Migrations from outside to within 

Ethnic homelands 

Encounters and conflicts 

Areas of interest: Class and ethnic differences and divisions 

Julien Dubuque's Mines, Dubuque, Iowa, #88002664: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Extraction and production 

Workers and work culture 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Migration from outside to within 

Community and neighborhood 

Ethnic homelands 

Areas of interest: Ethnic and class differences and divisions 

Buxton Historic Townsite, Monroe County, Iowa, #83000392: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Extraction 

Workers and work cultures 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Migration from outside and within 

Community and neighborhood 
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Encounters and conflicts 

Areas of interest: Ethnic and class differences and divisions 

Lowell Historic District, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, #78003149: 

Peopling Places: 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Developing the American Economy: 

Production 

Workers and work culture 

Labor organizations and protest 

Expanding Science and Technology: 

Technological applications 

Effects on lifestyle and health 

Shaping the Political Landscape: 

Parties, protests, and movements 

Creating Social Institutions and Movements: 

Clubs and organizations 

Reform movements 

Areas of interest: Worker protest, Transition to industrialization, Company town with 

factory layout, Behavior regulations, and Social, cultural, economic inferences from 

workers' 

Blackstone Canal Historic District, Worchester County, Massachusetts, #95001004: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Transportation and communication 

Workers and work culture 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Migration from outside to within 

Community and neighborhood 

Areas of interest: Community developed out around industry needs 

Blackstone Manufacturing Company Historic District, Worchester County, Massachusetts, 

#95001038: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Production 

Distribution and consumption 

Workers and work culture 

Creating Social Institutions and Movements: 

Reform movements 

Areas of interest: Gender issues and Development of factory culture 

Fayette, Delta County, Michigan, #96001480 (boundary increase): 

Developing the American Economy: 

Production 
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Distribution and consumption 

Workers and work culture 

Areas of interest: Development of factory culture 

Goldfield Historic District, Esmeralda County, Nevada, #82003213: 

Developing American Economy: 

Extraction and production 

Workers and work culture 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 

Migration from outside to within 

Community and neighborhood 

Areas of interest: Commercial and social aspects of frontier mining 

Kate Mullany House, Troy County, New York, #98000453: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Workers and work culture 

Labor organizations and protests 

Shaping the Political Landscape: 

Parties, protest, and movements 

Political ideas, cultures, and theories 

Areas interest: Gender issues 

Hope Mills Historic District, Cumberland County, North Carolina, #85001515: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Production 

Distribution and consumption 

Workers and work culture 

Governmental policies and practices 

Expanding Science and Technology: 

Technological applications 

Effects on lifestyle and health 

Creating Social Institutions and Movements: 

Reform movements 

Areas of interest: Transition from slave-based industry to free-labor and Ethnic and class 

differences and divisions 

Cairnbrook Historic District, Somerset County, Pennsylvania, #94000523: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Production 

Distribution and consumption 

Workers and work culture 

Peopling Places: 

Family and the life cycle 

Health, nutrition, and disease 
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Migration from outside to within 

Areas of interest: Community development from industry need 

Coopersville Ironworks Site, Cherokee County, South Carolina, #76001699: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Extraction and production 

Workers and work culture 

Governmental policies and practices 

Areas of interest: Transition from slave-based industry to free labor and Ethnic and class 

differences and divisions 

Thurber, Erath County, Texas, #79002936: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Extraction and production 

Workers and work culture 

Labor organizations and protests 

Governmental policies and practices 

Shaping the Political Landscape: 

Parties, protest, and movements 

Areas of interest: Labor protest and Ethnic and class differences and divisions 

Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, Harpers Ferry Historic District, Jefferson County, West 

Virginia, #66000041, #79002584: 

Developing the American Economy: 

Production 

Distribution and consumption 

Workers and work culture 

Labor protests 

Governmental policies and practices 

Expanding Science and Technology: 

Experimentation and invention 

Technological applications 

Effects on lifestyle and health 

Creating Social Institutions and Movements: 

Reform movements 

Areas of interest: Company town with factory layout, Transition to factory discipline, 

Behavior regulations, Effect of labor and changing labor practices on Worker protests 

Examples of Properties Rejected: 

Black Diamond Mines, Contra Costa County, California, #91001425 

Winehaven, Contra Costa County, California, #78000658 

Antioch Potash Plants, Sheridan County, Nebraska, #79001455 

 
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APPENDIX B 

National Register and National Historic Landmark Properties Reviewed for the 

Development of Labor Archeology Property Types: 

Alabama 

Fort Mitchell Site, Russell County 

Alaska 

Kolmakov Redoubt Site, Bethel Borough-Census Area 

Fort Durham Site, Juneau Borough-Census Area 

Sunrise City Historic District, Kenai Peninsula Borough-Census Area 

ARHS Site KOD-207, Kodiak Island Borough-Census Area 

Kodiak 0 It Site, Kodiak Island Borough-Census Area 

Avalitkuk, North Slope Borough-Census Area 

Negilik Site, North Slope Borough-Census Area 

Arizona 

Archeological Site No. AR-03-04-03-81 0, Coconino County 

Archeological Site No. AR-03-04-05-414, Coconino County 

CHARLES H. SPENCER Hulk, Coconino County 

Clifton Townsite Historic District, Green lee County 

Growler Mine Area, Pima County 

Kentucky Camp Historic District, Pima, Santa Cruz County 

Lynx Creek District, Yavapai County 

Arkansas 

Bayou Sel, Clark County 

Jones Mill Site (3HS28), Hot Spring County 

Rush Historic District, Marion County 

California 

Black Diamond Mines, Contra Costa County 

Winehaven, Contra Costa County 

Green Brae Brick Yard, Marin County 

Pierce Ranch Marin County 

Round Valley Flour Mills, Mendocino County 

Griffith Quarry, Placer County 

SS RIO DE JANEIRO Shipwreck, San Francisco County 

Bourn-Roth Estate, San Mateo County 

White's Gulch Arrastra, Siskiyou County 

STAMBOUL (Whaling Bark) Solano County 

Colorado 

Lamb Spring, Douglas County 

Cardiff Coke Ovens, Garfield County 

Holden Mining and Smelting Company, Pitkin County 
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West Stoneham Archeological District, Weld County 

Connecticut 

Hugh Cain Fulling Mill and Elias Glover Woolen Mill Archeological Site, Fairfield County 

Cos Cob Power Station, Fairfield County 

New York Belting and Packing Company Fairfield County 

Nichols Satinet Mill Site, Fairfield County 

Old Mine Park Archeological Site, Fairfield County 

Rockrimmon Rockshelter, Fairfield County 

Hazardville Historic District, Hartford County 

Pitkin Glassworks Ruin, Hartford County 

Simeon North Factory Site, Hartford County 

Beckley Furnace, Litchfield County 

Harvey Brooks Pottery Shop and Kiln Site, Litchfield County 

Gillette's Grist Mill, Litchfield County 

Kent Iron Furnace, Litchfield County 

Milton Center Historic District, Litchfield County 

Mount Riga Ironworks Site, Litchfield County 

Northfield Knife Company Site Litchfield County 

Rockbury Iron Mine and Furnace Complex, Litchfield County 

Sharon Valley Historic District, Litchfield County 

West Goshen Historic District, Litchfield County 

Crittenden Wilcox Mill, Middlesex County 

Hammanasset Paper Mill Site, New Haven County 

Waterbury Brass Mill, New Haven County 

Eli Whitney Gun Factory, New Haven County 

Coventry Glass Factory Historic District, Tolland County 

Gurleyville Historic District Tolland County 

Valley Falls Cotton Mill Site, Tolland County 

Daniel s Village Archeological Site, Windham County 

New Roxbury Ironworks Site, Windham County 

Delaware 

J.H. Wilkerson and Son Brickworks, Kent County 

Duncan Beard Site, Kent County 

Brandywine Village Historic District, Kent County 

Phi lip Reading Tannery, Kent County 

Wooddale Historic District, Kent County 

Lewes Historic District, Sussex County 

Pine Grove Furnace Site, Sussex County 

Florida 

Arch Creek Historic and Archeological Site, Dade County 

Kingsley Plantation Duval County 

North Hill Preservation District, Escambia County 

Bulow Plantation Ruins, Flagler County 
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Escambe, Leon County 

Roberts Farm Historic and Archeological District Leon County 

Cedar Keys Historic and Archeological District, Levy County 

Arcadia Sawmill and Arcadia Cotton Mill Santa Rosa County 

Ross Hammock Site, Volusia County 

Wakulla Springs Archeological and Historic District Wakulla County 

Georgia 

Etowah Valley District Bartow County 

John Houstoun McIntosh Sugarhouse, Camden County 

Bums Quarry, Carroll County 

Athens Factory, Clarke County 

Ruffs Mill and Concord Covered Bridge, Cobb County 

Sope Creek Ruins, Cobb County 

Cole Town District, Coweta County 

Tanner's Mill, Hall County 

Jewell Historic District, Hancock County, Warren County 

John M. War Sr. House, Heard County 

Dahlonega Consolidated Gold Mine, Lumpkin County 

Fort King George, McIntosh County 

Watson Mill Covered Bridge and Mill Historic District, Oglethorpe County 

John Frank Mathews Plantation, Talbot County 

Lee and Gordon Mill, Walker County 

Nacoochee Valley, White County 

Hawaii 

Mauna Kea Adze Quarry, Hawaii County 

Idaho 

Barber Dam and Lumber Mill, Adams County 

Hells Canyon Archeological District, Adams County, Idaho County, Nez Perce County 

Fort Hall, Bannock County 

Sawtooth City, Blaine County 

Moore Gulch Chinese Mining Site (10-CW-159), Clearwater County 

Chinese Mining Camp Archeological Site, Idaho County 

Lower Salmon River Archeological District, Idaho County, Lewis County, Nez Perce County 

Illinois 

Grand Tower Mining, Manufacturing, and Transportation Company Site, Jackson County 

Rock Island Arsenal, Rock Island County 

Indiana 

Muskegon Shipwreck Site, La Porte County 

Iowa 

Spring Branch Butter Factory Site, Delaware County 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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117 

Dubuque Trading Post-Village of Kettle Chief Archeological District, Dubuque County 

Mines of Spain Lead Mining Community Archeological District, Dubuque County 

Kentucky 

Martin-Holder-Bush Mill, Clark County 

F. Taylor Mill, Clark County 

Red River iron Furnace, Estill County 

Archeological Site LSI1r52, Franklin County 

Kelly's Suwanee Furnace Office, Lyon County 

William Suggett Agricultural and Industrial District, Scott County 

Center Furnace, Trigg County 

Lost River Archeological Cave, Warren County 

Louisiana 

Barataria Unit of Jean Lafitte Historical Park Historic District, Jefferson Parish 

Fullerton Mill and Town, Vernon Parish 

Maryland 

Linwood Historic District Carroll County 

Hartford Furnace Historic District, Hartford County 

Husband Flint Mill Site, Hartford County 

Lower Deer Creek Valley Historic District, Hartford County 

Brookeville Woolen Mill and House, Montgomery County 

Woodyard Archeological Site, Prince George's County 

Antietam Furnace Complex Archeological Site, Washington County 

Massachusetts 

Sandy Neck Cultural Resources District, Barnstable County 

Samuel Smith Tavern Site, Barnstable County 

Mill River Historic District, Berkshire County 

Borderland Historic District, Bristol County 

Furnace Village Historic District, Bristol County 

Russells Mills Villages Historic District, Bristol County 

Newburyport Historic District Essex County 

Turner Falls Historic District Franklin County 

Spot Pond Archeological District, Middlesex County 

Borderland Historic District, Norfolk County 

Lyon's Turning Mill, Norfolk County 

Massachusetts Hornfels-Braintree Slate Quarry, Norfolk County 

Stoughtonham Furnace Site, Norfolk County 

John Winthrop Jr. Iron Furnace Site, Norfolk County 

Town Brook Historic and Archeological District, Plymouth County 

Boston Naval Shipyard, Suffolk County 

Dorchester Pottery Works, Suffolk County 

Blackstone Canal Historic District, Worcester County 

Blackstone Manufacturing Company Historic District, Worcester County 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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Matthews Fulling Mill Site, Worcester County 

Rogers House, Worcester County 

Michigan 

Campbell Farm Site, Cheboygan County 

Fayette, Delta County 

Minong Mine Historic District, Keweenaw County 

F.T. BARNEY, Shipwreck, Presque Isle County 

Minnesota 

Buena Vista Archeological Historic District, Beltrami County 

Old Backus, Cass County 

St. Anthony Falls Historic District, Hennepin County 

NIAGRA Shipwreck Site Lake County 

Mississippi 

Plymouth, Lowndes County 

Missouri 

Pearson Creek Archeological District Greene County 

Crescent Quarry Archeological Site, St. Louis County 

Williams Creek Archeological Site, St. Louis County 

Kreilich Archeological Site, Ste. Genevieve County 

Troyer Site, Seward County 

Antioch Potash Plants, Sheridan County 

Montana 

Pretty Creek Archeological Site, Carbon County 

Nebraska 

Antioch Potash Plants, Sheridan County 

Nevada 

Sand Springs, Churchill County 

Homestake Mine, Clark County 

Goldfield Historic District, Esmeralda County 

Bristol Wells Town Site, Lincoln County 

Belmont, Nye County 

Johnson Lake Mine Historic District, White Pine County 

New Hampshire 

Harrisville Rural District, Cheshire County 

Pottersville District, Cheshire County 

Mt. Jasper Lithic Source, Coos County 

Contoocook Mills Industrial District Hillsborough County 

New England Glassworks Site, Hillsborough County 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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Old County Road South Historic District, Hillsborough County 

Wiswall Falls Mills Site, Strafford County 

New Jersey 

Estellville Glassworks Historic District, Atlantic County 

Hopper Gristmill Site, Bergen County 

Eayres Plantation and Mill Site, Burlington County 

Hanover Furnace, Burlington County 

Vincentown Historic District, Burlington County 

Dennisville Historic District, Cape May County 

Dart's Mill Historic District, Hunterdon County 

Everittstown Historic District, Hunterdon County 

Potterville Village Historic District, Hunterdon County 

G.W. Helme Snuff Mill District, Middlesex County 

Tinton Falls Historic District, Monmouth County 

Pottersville Village Historic District, Morris, Somerset County 

Ringwood Manor, Passaic County 

Millville Historic and Archeological District, Sussex County 

Feltville Historic District, Union County 

Shippen Manor, Warren County 

New Mexico 

Dawson Cemetery, Colfax County 

Hopeful Lode, Lincoln County 

Holiday Mesa Logging Camp, Sandoval County 

Tonque Pueblo, Sandoval County 

Virgin Canyon Logging Camp No.1, Sandoval County 

Virgin Mesa Logging Camp No. I, Sandoval County 

Virgin Mesa Logging Camp No.2, Sandoval County 

Virgin Mesa Logging Camp No. 3, Sandoval County 

New York 

Stuyvesant Falls Mill District, Columbia County 

Adirondack Iron and Steel Company, Essex County 

Morganville Pottery Factory Site, Genesee County 

Sterlingville Archeological District, Jefferson County 

Wood's Grist Mill, Jefferson County 

Alpina Archeological District, Lewis County 

Lewisburg Archeological District, Lewis County 

Brown's Race Historic District, Monroe County 

Chili Mills Conservation Area, Monroe County 

Elbridge Hydraulic Industry Archeological District, Onondaga County 

Burden Iron Works Site, Rensselaer County 

Poesten Kill Gorge Historic District, Rensselaer County 

Peebles (Peobles) Island Saratoga County 

Fall Street-Trinity Lane Historic District, Seneca County 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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West Stockholm Historic District, St. Lawrence County 

Nicoll Halsey House and Halseyville Archeological Sites, Tompkins County 

Ithaca Pottery Site, Tompkins County 

North Carolina 

Robert Harvey Morrison Farm and Pioneer Mills Gold Mine, Cabarrus County 

Yoder's Mills Historic District, Catawba County 

Hadley House and Grist Mill, Chatham County 

Edenton Historic District, Chowan County 

Hope Mills Historic District, Cumberland County 

West Point on the Eno, Durham County 

Bethania Historic District, Forsyth County 

Single Brothers Industrial Complex Site Forsyth County 

Henry Turner House and Caldwell-Turner Mill Site, Iredell County 

Taylor's Mill, Nash County 

Wilmington Historic and Archeological District, New Hanover County 

Franklinville Historic District, Randolph County 

Mount Shepherd Pottery Site, Randolph County 

Troublesome Creek Ironworks, Rockingham County 

Bechtler Mint Site, Rutherford County 

Walnut Hill Cotton Gin, Wake County 

Ohio 

North Union Shaker Site, Cuyahoga County 

Kellys Island Historic District (Boundary Increase), Erie County 

Rock Mill, Fairfield County 

Berry Brothers Bolt Works, Franklin County 

Walter Ring House and Mill Site, Monroe County 

Benjamin F. Hopkins Stone Building, Portage County 

Zoar Historic District (Boundary Increase), Tuscarawas County 

Marietta Historic District, Washington County 

Oklahoma 

Arrastra Site, Comanche County 

Haley's Point Site, Marshall County 

Oregon 

Isabella, Clatsop County 

Champoeg State Park Historic Archeological District, Marion County 

Joseph Despard Cabin Site, Marion County 

Hudson's Bay Company Granary and Clerk s House Site, Marion County 

Sunken Village Archeological Site (35MU4), Multnomah County 

Pennsylvania 

Bradys Bend Iron Company Furnaces, Armstrong County 

Dale Furnace and Forge Historic District Berks County 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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121 

Dreibelbis Mill, Berks County 

Geiger Mill, Berks County 

Guldin Mill, Berks County 

Nicholas Johnson Mill, Berks County 

Kauffman Mill, Berks County 

Knabb-Bieber Mill, Berks County 

Robesonia Furnace Historic District, Berks County 

Yoder Mill, Berks County 

Etna Furnace, Blair County 

Holicong Village Historic District, Bucks County 

North Warwick Historic and Archeological District, Chester County 

Robert Wilson House, Chester County 

Chester Creek Historic District, Delaware County 

Ridley Creek State Park, Delaware County 

Alliance Furnace, Fayette County 

Brown-Moore Blacksmith Shop, Fayette County 

Smock Historic District, Fayette County 

Rice's Landing Historic District, Greene County 

Barree Forge and Furnace, Huntingdon County 

Greenwood Furnace, Huntingdon County 

Monroe Furnace, Hunti11gdon County 

Robe1tsdale Historic District, Huntingdon County 

Mount Hope Estate, Lancaster County 

Mill Creek Historic District, Montgomery County 

Jacobsburg Historic District, Northampton County 

Lehigh Canal: Eastern Section Glendon and Abbott Street Industrial Sites, Northampton County 

Boswell Historic District Somerset County 

Cairnbrook Historic District, Somerset County 

Slickville Historic District, Westmoreland County 

Codorus Forge and Furnace Historic District, York County 

Kise Mill Bridge Historic District, York County 

Muddy Creek Forks Historic District York County 

York Iron Company Mine, York County 

Puerto Rico 

Hacienda Buena Union, Mayaguez Municipality 

Central Playa Grande, Vieques Municipality 

Resolución Historic District, Vieques Municipality 

Rhode Island 

Tillinghast Mill Site, Kent County 

Furnace Carolina Site Providence County 

Furnace Hill Brook Historic and Archeological District, Providence County 

McGonagle Site, RU-1227, Providence County 

George Fayerweather Blacksmith Shop Washington County 

Fisherville Historic and Archeological District, Washington County 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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Hallville Historic and Archeological District, Washington County 

Hillsdale Historic and Archeological District Washington County 

Hope Village Historic District Washington County 

Silas Mumford Site (Tappan Site RI--705), Washington County 

Parris Brook Historic and Archeological District, Washington County 

Sodom Mill Historic and Archeological District, Washington County 

South Carolina 

Pendelton Historic District, Anderson County 

Fort Lyttelton Site, Beaufort County 

Coopersville Ironworks Site (38CK2) and Susan Furnace Site (38.CK 67), Cherokee County 

Cowpens Furnace Site (38CK 73) Cherokee County 

Ellen Furnace Site (38CK71), Cherokee County 

King's Creek Furnace Site (38CK69), Cherokee County 

Nesbitt's Limestone Quarry (38CK69) Cherokee County 

Thicketty Mountain Ore Pits (38CK74), Cherokee County 

Pottersville, Edgefield County 

Pelham Mills Site (38GR165), Greenville County 

Trapp and Chandler Pottery Site (38GN169), Greenwood County 

Darn Gold Mine, McCormick County 

Pendleton Historic District~ Oconee County Pickens County 

Columbia Canal, Richland County 

Jackson's Furnace Site (38YK217), York County 

Tennessee 

Patterson Forge (40CH87), Cheatham County 

Sycamore Mills Site, Cheatham County 

Turnbull forge (40CH97), Cheatham County 

Cascade Distillery Site Coffee County 

Archeological Site No. 40DV35 Davidson County 

Brownsport I Furnace (40DR85), Decatur County 

Brownsport II Furnace (40DR86), Decatur County 

Decatur Furnace (40DR84), Decatur County 

Bellview Furnace (40DS23), Dickson County 

Cumberland Furnace Historic District (40DS22), Dickson County 

Jones Creek Forge (40DS30), Dickson County 

Laurel Furnace (40DS4), Dickson County 

Valley Forge (40DS28), Dickson County 

White Bluff Forge, Dickson County 

East Tennessee Iron Manufacturing Company Blast Furnace, Hamilton County 

Tanyard Branch Furnace (40HR121), Hardin County 

Lee and Gould Furnace (40HI125), Hickman County 

New Aetna Furnace Historic District (40HI 149), Hickman County 

Oakland Furnace and Forge (40HI146), Hickman County 

Old Aetna Furnace (40H1148), Hickman County 

Standard Furnace (40HI145), Hickman County 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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123 

Fairchance Furnace (40HS 168), Humphrey County 

T. D. Davenport Forge (40Lr14), Lawrence County 

Napier Furnaces Historic District (40LS14), Lewis County 

Steele's Iron Works (40LS15), Lewis County 

Rockdale Furnace Historic District (40MU487), Maury County 

Gracey-Woodward Furnace (40MT378), Montgomery County 

Lafayette Furnace (40MT372), Montgomery County 

Louisa Furnace (40 MT379), Montgomery County 

Poplar Spring Furnace (40MT376), Montgomery County 

Sailor's Rest Furnace (40MT375), Montgomery County 

Tennessee Furnace (40MT383), Montgomery County 

Washington Furnace and Forge (40MT382) Montgomery County 

Yellow Creek Furnace and Forge (40MT371), Montgomery County 

Cedar Grove Furnace (40PY77), Perry County 

Bear Spring Furnace (40SW207), Stewart County 

Bellwood Furnace (40SW21 0), Stewart County 

Brunsoni Furnace (40SW219), Stewart County 

Clark Furnace (40SW212), Stewart County 

Cross Creek Furnace (40SW217), Stewart County 

Dover Flint Quarries, Stewart County 

Eclipse Furnace (40SW213), Stewart County 

Henry Hollister House, Stewart County 

LaGrange Furnace (40SW214), Stewart County 

Rough and Ready Furnace (40SW215), Stewart County 

Big bone Cave, Van Buren County 

Forty-eight Forge (40WY63), Wayne County 

Marion Furnace (40WY61), Wayne County 

Harpeth Furnace (40WM83), Williamson County 

Texas 

Maverick-Altgelt Ranch and Fenstermaker-Fromme Farm, Bexar County 

Terlingua Historic District, Brewster County 

Old Brulay Plantation, Cameron County 

Cranston Site, Denton County 

Roark-Griffith Site, Denton County 

Thurber Historic District, Erath County 

Marshall Arsenal CSA, Harrison County 

El Sal del Rey Archeological District, Hidalgo County 

Kirbee Kiln Site, Montgomery County 

Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument, Potter County 

McKinney Homestead, Travis County 

Utah 

Howe Flume Historic District, Summit County 

Soldier Creek Kilns, Tooele County 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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124 

Vermont 

Battery Street Historic District, Chittenden County 

Crystal Lake Falls Historic District, Orleans County 

Virgin Islands 

Bethlehem Middle Works Historic District, St. Croix Island 

Estate La Reine, St. Croix Island 

Fairplain Historic and Archeological District, St. Croix Island 

Slob Historic District, St. Croix Island 

Strawberry Hill Historic District, St. Croix Island 

Dennis Bay Historic District, St. John Island 

Jossie Gut Historic District, St. John Island 

L'Esperance Historic District, St. John Island 

More Hill Historic District, St. John Island 

Rustenberg Plantation South Historic District, St. John Island 

Trunk Bay Sugar Factory, ST. John Island 

Hassel Island Historic District, St. Thomas Island 

Virginia 

Lee-Fendall House, Alexandria Independent City 

Longdale Furnace Historic District, Alleghany County 

Pamplin Pipe Factory, Appomattox County 

Falling Creek Ironworks Archeological Site, Chesterfield County 

Danville Tobacco Warehouse and Residential District, Danville County 

Brooklyn Tobacco Factory, Halifax County 

Chickahominy Shipyard Archeological Site, James City County 

Kentland Farm Historic and Archeological District, Montgomery County 

Michael Kinzer House, Montgomery County 

Petersburg Old Town Historic District, Petersburg County 

Kennedy-Wade Mill, Rockbridge County 

Port Republic Historic District, Rockingham County 

Tubal Furnace Archeological Site, Spotsylvania County 

Accokeek Furnace Archeological Site (44ST53), Stafford County 

Morgan Jones 1677 Pottery Kiln, Westmoreland County 

College Landing, Williamsburg Independent City 

Washington 

Cape Disappointment Historic District, Pacific County 

North Bonneville Archeological District, Skamania County 

Cowley Park, Spokane County 

Hudsons Bay Gristmill Site on Colville River, Stevens County 

Tumwater Historic District, Thurston County 

Weyerhaeuser South Bay Log Dump Rural Historic Landscape, Thurston County 

West Virginia 

Darkesville Historic District, Berkeley County 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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125 

Mill Creek Historic District, Berkeley County 

Tuscarora Creek Historic District Berkeley County 

Union Bryarly's Mill, Berkeley County 

Peter Tarr Furnace Site, Hancock County 

Harpers Ferry Historic District, Jefferson County 

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Jefferson County 

Malden Historic District, Kanawha County 

Wisconsin 

Trout Point Logging Camp, Ashland County 

Potosi Badger Huts Site, Grant County 

Wyoming 

Black Mountain Archeological District, Big Horn County 

Obsidian Cliff Park County 

Patteen Creek Site (48PL68), Platte County 

 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

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126 

APPENDIX C 

Applicable Multiple Property Submissions 

Appendix C lists potentially applicable Multiple Property Submission cover documents or MPS 

for labor archaeology of the industrial era. MPS cover documents are currently used by the 

National Register for multiple property documentation, together with individual registration 

forms. The National Register has used the Multiple Resource Area (MRA) and Thematic Group 

Resources (TR) formats in the past. The following list represents MPS, MRA, and TR 

documents listed as of October 1, 2011 that specifically address industry or resources connected 

to labor (see Little et al. 2000:62-64). Other specific or more current MPS documents maybe 

applicable. 

Table C1: National Register of Historic Places Potentially Applicable Multiple Covers as of 

October 1, 2011

State or 

Territory 

Reference 

Number 

Resource 

Name 

AK 64500001 CCC Historic Properties in Alaska MPS 

AK 64500980 Entrepreneurship and Exploitation along the Fairweather Coast and 

the Glacier Bay Vicinity 

AR 64500019 Facilities Constructed by the CCC in Arkansas MPS 

AR 64500022 Historic Railroad Depots of Arkansas MPS 

AR 64500959 New Deal Recovery Efforts in Arkansas MPS 

AZ 64500777 Cattle Ranching in Arizona MPS 

AZ 64501032 Cattle Ranching in Arizona in the Modern Era, 1945-1970 

AZ 64500036 Depression-Era USDA Forest Service Administrative Complexes in 

Arizona MPS 

AZ 64500041 Logging Railroad Resources of the Coconino and Kaibab National 

Forests MPS 

CA 64501116 Late 19th and Early 20th Century Development and Architecture in 

Pasadena MPS 

CO 64500068 Hinsdale County Metal Mining MPS 

CO 64000074 Lafayette Coal Mining Era Buildings TR 

CO 64500997 Metal Mining and Tourist Era Resources of Boulder County AD MPS 

CO 64500071 Metal Mining and Tourist Era Resources of Boulder County MPS 

CO 64501020 Mining Industry in Colorado, MPS 

CO 64501107 Mining Resources of San Juan County, Colorado MPS 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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127 

State or 

Territory 

Reference 

Number 

Resource 

Name 

CO 64500970 New Deal Resources on Colorado's Eastern Plains MPS 

CO 64500743 Railroads in Colorado, 1858-1948 MPS 

CO 64500744 Ranching Resources of South Park, Colorado MPS 

CT 64000087 Connecticut State Park and Forest Depression-Era Federal Work 

Relief Programs Structures TR 

CT 64000094 Historic Industrial Complexes of Southington TR 

CT 64000095 Historic Industrial Complexes of Southington TR (AD) 

DC 64500948 Streetcar and Bus Resources of Washington, DC MPS 

DC 64500969 Telecommunications Resources of Washington DC MPS 

FL 64500097 Citrus Industry Resources of Theodore Strawn, Inc., MPS 

FL 64500105 Fish Cabins of Charlotte Harbor MPS 

FL 64500918 Florida's New Deal Resources MPS 

IA 64500146 CCC Properties in Iowa State Parks MPS 

IA 64500150 Commercial & Industrial Development of Cedar Rapids MPS 

IA 64500156 Flour Milling in Iowa MPS 

IA 64000151 Houses of Mississippi River Men TR 

IA 64500169 Louden Machinery Company, Fairfield Iowa MPS 

IA 64500171 Mines of Spain Archeological MPS 

ID 64500188 Chinese Sites in the Warren Mining District MPS 

IL 64500877 Illinois Waterway Navigation System Facilities MPS 

IN 64500212 Grain Mills in Indiana MPS 

IN 64500215 New Deal Resources in Indiana State Parks MPS 

IN 64500216 New Deal Resources on Indiana State Lands MPS 

IN 64500942 New Deal Work Relief Projects in St. Joseph County, Indiana MPS 

KS 64501117 Commercial and Industrial Resources of Hutchinson MPS 

KS 64500889 Commercial and Industrial Resources of Hutchinson MPS 

KS 64500797 New Deal-Era Resources of Kansas MPS 

KS 64500223 Railroad Resources of Kansas MPS 

KS 64501087 World War II-Era Aviation-Related Facilities of Kansas 

KY 64000245 New Deal Era Construction in Kentucky MRA 

KY 64000256 Textile Mills of Louisville TR 

LA 64000268 Thibodaux MRA 

MA 64500254 Water Supply System of Metropolitan Boston MPS 

MN 64000380 Cold Spring Brewers' Houses TR 

MN 64500278 Commercial Logging in Minnesota MPS 

MN 64000350 Cuyuna Iron Range Municipally-Owned Elevated Metal Water Tanks 

TR 

MN 64500279 Federal Relief Construction in Minnesota MPS 

MN 64500805 Federal Relief Construction in Minnesota MPS AD 

MN 64500751 Grain Elevator Design in Minnesota MPS 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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State or 

Territory 

Reference 

Number 

Resource 

Name 

MN 64500281 Minnesota Hydroelectric Generating Facilities MPS 

MN 64500285 Minnesota State Park CCC/WPA/Rustic Style MPS 

MO 64000398 Missouri Lumber and Mining Company MRA 

MO 64501090 Railroad Related Historic Commercial and Industrial Resources in 

Kansas City, MO MPS 

MO 64500308 Railroad Related Historic Commercial and Industrial Resources in 

Kansas City, Missouri MPS 

MO 64500914 South St. Louis Historic Working and Middle Class Streetcar Suburbs 

MPS 

MO 64500882 Working Class Hotels at 19th and Main Streets, Kansas City, Missouri 

MPS 

MO 64500993 Working-Class and Middle-Income Apartment Buildings in Kansas 

City, Missouri MPS 

MS 64500330 State Parks in Mississippi built by the CCC MPS 

NC 64000467 Slater Industrial Academy Houses TR 

NC 64500884 Tapoco Hydroelectric Project MPS 

NE 64500895 Petroleum Marketing by the Standard Oil Company (Nebraska) MPS 

NH 64000483 Amoskeag Manufacturing Company Housing Districts TR 

NJ 64000496 Operating Passenger Railroad Stations TR 

NM 64500410 Auto-oriented Commercial Development in Albuquerque MPS 

NM 64500421 Mining Sites in the Nogal Mining District of the Lincoln National 

Forest MPS 

NM 64500423 New Deal in New Mexico MPS 

NM 64500424 Public Works of the CCC in the Lincoln National Forest MPS 

NM 64500426 Railroad Logging Era Resources of the Canon de San Diego Land 

Grant in North--Central New Mexico MPS 

NM 64500427 Railroad Logging Sites of the Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico 

MPS 

NY 64500843 Buffalo Grain and Materials Elevator MPS 

NY 64500925 Historic and Engineering Resources of the Chenango Canal MPS 

NY 64501060 Hydraulics/Larkin Neighborhood, Buffalo, Erie County, NY 

NY 64500965 Industrial Development in the Oaks Creek Valley, Otsego County, 

New York MPS 

NY 64501069 Industrial Resources in the City of Syracuse, Onondaga County, NY 

MPS 

NY 64000566 Interborough Rapid Transit Subway Control Houses TR 

NY 64500900 New York City Subway System MPS 

NY 64500825 Red Potsdam Sandstone Resources Taken from Raquette River 

Quarries MPS 

OH 64500475 Canal Winchester MPS 

OH 64500802 Canal, Railroad, and Industrial Resources of the Village of 

Clinton/Warwick, Ohio MPS 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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State or 

Territory 

Reference 

Number 

Resource 

Name 

OH 64500759 Gates Mills MPS 

OH 64500478 Historic Mill-Related Resources of Delaware and Liberty Townships 

MPS 

OH 64501068 Historic Resources of the Cincinnati Park and Parkway System 1817-

1959 

OH 64000640 Ohio and Erie Canal TR 

OK 64000665 Clay Tile Grain Elevators in Northwestern Oklahoma TR 

OK 64500491 Energy-Related Properties in Northeastern Oklahoma MPS 

OK 64500492 Grain Storage and Processing Facilities in Western Oklahoma MPS 

OK 64000690 WPA Public Bldgs., Recreational Facilities and Cemetery 

Improvements in Southeastern Oklahoma, 1935--1943 TR 

OK 64000691 WPA Public Bldgs., Recreational Facilities and Water Quality 

Improvements in Northwestern Oklahoma, 1935--1943 TR 

OK 64500495 WPA Resources in Lincoln County MPS 

OK 64000692 Woodframe Grain Elevators of Oklahoma Panhandle TR 

OR 64500517 USDA Forest Service Administrative Buildings in Oregon and 

Washington Built by the CCC MPS 

PA 64500521 Allegheny Portage Railroad MPS 

PA 64500522 Allegheny River Navigation System MPS 

PA 64500523 Aluminum Industry Resources of Southwestern Pennsylvania MPS 

PA 64500524 Anthracite--Related Resources of Northeastern Pennsylvania MPS 

PA 64500525 Bituminous Coal and Coke Resources of Pennsylvania MPS 

PA 64000724 Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Architecture in Pennsylvania 

State Parks: 1933-1942, TR 

PA 64500531 Industrial Resources of Huntingdon County, 1780--1939 MPS 

PA 64500532 Iron and Steel Resources of Pennsylvania MPS 

PA 64500535 Oil Industry Resources in Western Pennsylvania MPS 

PA 64000729 Pennsylvania Railroad Rolling Stock TR 

PA 64500537 Railroad Resources of York County MPS 

PR 64500995 New Deal Era Constructions in the Forest Reserves in Puerto Rico 

PR 64501052 Rum Industry in Puerto Rico MPS 

RI 64000756 Public Works and Utilities--Sewage Treatment Facilities in 

Providence, 1895--1935 TR 

SC 64000770 Early Ironworks of Northwestern South Carolina TR 

SC 64000771 Early Ironworks of Northwestern South Carolina TR (AD) 

SC 64500573 Textile Mills designed by W.B. Smith Whaley MPS 

SD 64500578 Federal Relief Construction in South Dakota MPS 

TN 64500606 Iron Industry on the Western Highland Rim 1790s--1920s MPS 

TN 64500607 Iron Industry on the Western Highland Rim 1790s--1920s MPS (AD) 

TN 64500906 Lime Industry of Houston County, Tennessee 

TN 64000818 Omohundro Waterworks System TR 
NPS Form 10-900-b (Rev. 01/2009) OMB No. 1024-0018 

(Expires 5/31/2012) 

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State or 

Territory 

Reference 

Number 

Resource 

Name 

TN 64000819 Omohundro Waterworks System TR (AD) 

TN 64500614 Pre-TVA Hydroelectric Power Development in Tennessee MPS 

TN 64000823 State Parks in Tennessee Built by the CCC and the WPA, 1934--1942, 

TR 

TN 64500621 Transportation-Related Properties of Jackson MPS 

TX 64000826 19th Century Pottery Kilns of Denton Co. TR 

TX 64500632 Early Logging Industry in East Texas MPS 

TX 64500633 Early Twentieth Century Logging Industry Historic Resources on the 

National Forests and Grasslands in Texas MPS 

UT 64500664 Electric Power Plants of Utah MPS 

UT 64000866 Mining Boom Era Houses TR 

UT 64000871 Public Works Buildings TR 

UT 64500669 Residences of Mining Boom Era Park City MPS 

UT 64000875 Tintic Mining District MRA 

VA 64501126 Virginia State Parks built by New Deal Programs MPS 

VT 64500899 Hydroelectric Generating Facilities in Vermont MPS 

WA 64500700 Grain Production Properties in Eastern Washington MPS 

WA 64500703 Hydroelectric Power Plants in Washington State, 1890--1938 MPS 

WA 64000908 Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Shore Facilities TR 

WA 64500712 USDA Forest Service Administrative Buildings in Oregon and 

Washington Built by the CCC MPS 

WI 64000914 19th Century Grist and Flouring Mills of Sheboygan County TR 

WI 64500774 Historic Logging Industry in State Region 2 and the Nicolet NF MPS 

WI 64000942 Lime Kilns of Waukesha County TR 

WI 64000944 Mills of Grafton TR 

WI 64501057 Milwaukee County Parkway System 

WI 64500721 Racine Workers' Cottages MPS 

WI 64000948 Speculative Commercial Blocks of Superior's Boom Period 1888--

1892 TR 

WI 64000953 Water Works Structures of Rock County - 19th Century TR 

WV 64500726 Coal Company Stores in McDowell County MPS 

WV 64501099 New Deal Resources in West Virginia State Parks and Forests MPS 

WY 64500736 Depression-Era USDA Forest Service Administrative Complexes on 

Medicine Bow NF MPS 

WY 64500864 Industrial Facilities Served by Railroad in Cheyenne, Wyoming MPS 

WY 64501124 Motor Courts and Motels in Wyoming MPS 

WY 64501096 Ranches, Farms, and Homesteads in Wyoming, 1860-1960 MPS