The Nevada State Historic Preservation Office has received nearly $50,000 to launch a women's history project spotlighting women's rights and achievements throughout the state, specifically surrounding the push for women to get the vote.
The grant was part of the National Park Service's Underrepresented Communities Grant. Nevada was the only state to receive the grant.
Over the next year, NSHPO will help complete the Nevada Women's Cultural Resource Analyses with the funds from the grant.
Rebecca Palmer with the preservation office explained that the project will focus on creating a historic context, which is used to identify properties that could be nominated for the National Register for Historic Places.
“This grant will give women a presence in existing national register listings and it will also afford us the opportunity to identify new properties that could be listed in the national register because of their association with the women’s suffrage movement or the equal rights movement of the 1970s,” Palmer explained.
She said the historic context will be constructed using existing sources like existing historic places, scholarly works and the Nevada Women's History Project, which has already done work on the women's suffrage movement in the state.
“The point of a historic context is to really enliven the information we already have about historic buildings,” she said.
Palmer gave an example of the Las Vegas Grammar school, which was used by the Mesquite Club. The Mesquite Club was started in 1911 by civic-minded women in Southern Nevada who worked to improve the community and frequently held meetings about suffrage.
The community will get a chance to look through the preservation office's database and contribute their own information when the website page is up in running.
Palmer said the entire project is expected to be finished in two years.
Rebecca Palmer, Nevada State Historic Preservation Office