Historic Sites

In a development that carries an unsettling parallel with the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in March 2001, the Islamist group Ansar Dine has destroyed historic Sufi mausoleums in the Malian city of Timbuktu while locals looked on. Armed with pick axes, hoes and automatic weapons, the attackers laid waste to three mausoleums and at least seven tombs, which only days ago were added to UNESCO's list...

A disagreement over a well-known slice of the Southern California coast is threatening to drive a wedge between Marines and surfers, groups that had recently set aside differences and become political allies. At issue is the 2.25-mile stretch of surf and sand known as Trestles, between the San Onofre nuclear plant and the San Diego County-Orange County line. The name comes from two train trestles that parallel the ocean. To wave riders, Trestles represents seven of the primo surf breaks in the world.

From battlefields to bridges, historic sites across the country are facing demolition, neglect and encroaching developments. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has added 11 more places to the list of the country's most endangered, including a Revolutionary War battlefield, Malcolm X's home in Boston and the Philadelphia gym where Joe Frazier once trained. The trust is a Washington-based nonprofit that seeks to preserve sites of historic significance. Every year, the group identifies a list of buildings and places that it considers most endangered.

L.A. Councilman Richard Alarcon is hoping to save the Verdugo Hills Golf Course from residential development by adding it to the city's list of historic and cultural monuments, citing its history as a detention center for Japanese Americans during World War II. Residents contend the planned housing project would bring a torrent of vehicle traffic to the urban-rural area and get rid of a long-standing recreational resource. Other efforts to prevent development on the land have included failed attempts to rezone it or cobble together enough grants and government funding to buy it outright.

After restoring a home on the site of the Carroll County, Md., birthplace of Francis Scott Key, millionaire history buff William F. Chaney is selling it. The property's connection to the writer of "The Star-Spangled Banner" captivated Chaney, who bought Terra Rubra -- the name means "Red Earth" -- for $1.3 million two years ago.

Two fires ravaged historic sites in the nation's capital, one gutting part of a 134-year-old market and the other destroying irreplaceable documents and art at the Georgetown public library branch. Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin said the fires were unrelated. The first blaze tore through the Eastern Market, a Capitol Hill landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city-owned building was empty at the time and there were no injuries, Rubin said.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has signed a 25-year lease to take over a federal historic site where a group of Mormon pioneers are believed to have died in a snowstorm. The Mormon Church and the Bureau of Land Management signed papers in Cheyenne covering 930 acres of public land at Martin's Cove near Casper, culminating years of negotiations.

The House on Monday approved legislation to create a national historic site within a 650-acre preservation district in former President Jimmy Carter's hometown of Plains, Ga. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Richard Ray (D-Ga.), was passed by a voice vote and sent to the Senate, where a similar bill died last year because there was not enough time for a hearing.

Fifty years ago, amid wartime paranoia, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order that transformed 500 desolate acres in eastern California into an internment camp, ringed by barbed wire and occupied by Japanese-Americans who were feared as possible traitors. Marking the anniversary Wednesday, the House voted 400 to 13 to approve a bill designating the Manzanar camp in the Owens Valley as a national historic site, clearing the way for possible reconstruction of the camp's buildings.

President Reagan signed Wednesday legislation creating a national historic site in former President Jimmy Carter's hometown of Plains, Ga. The law authorizes the National Park Service to spend up to $3.5 million to "preserve the key sites and structures associated with Jimmy Carter during his lifetime, to provide for the interpretation of his life and presidency and to present the history of a small Southern town."

There is perhaps no greater American monument to the War in the Pacific than Ford Island in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. The naval base there with its old hangars, runway and control tower - some still showing damage from the Japanese attack that brought the United States into World War II - is on the National Register of Historic Places. Dotted around the island's 450 acres are memorials to the battleships Arizona, Utah and Oklahoma, which were sunk. Docked near the Arizona's submerged hull is the Missouri, the legendary battlewagon and scene of Japan's formal surrender on Sept.

In a development that carries an unsettling parallel with the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in March 2001, the Islamist group Ansar Dine has destroyed historic Sufi mausoleums in the Malian city of Timbuktu while locals looked on. Armed with pick axes, hoes and automatic weapons, the attackers laid waste to three mausoleums and at least seven tombs, which only days ago were added to UNESCO's list...

From battlefields to bridges, historic sites across the country are facing demolition, neglect and encroaching developments. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has added 11 more places to the list of the country's most endangered, including a Revolutionary War battlefield, Malcolm X's home in Boston and the Philadelphia gym where Joe Frazier once trained. The trust is a Washington-based nonprofit that seeks to preserve sites of historic significance. Every year, the group identifies a list of buildings and places that it considers most endangered.

As a travel writer, I'm always looking for new tools I can use to help plan my trips. Lately, there's been lots of talk about a social media site called Pinterest, a free online photo bulletin board that's popular with designers, foodies and crafts people. But could you use it to plan trips? Well, yes. It turns out that the travel industry, as well as individual travelers, are starting to use this visual social platform with interesting results. The photos make it easy for a traveler to quickly scan a destination's food, architecture or historic sites.

Judy Forte plans to report to her government job Monday morning without a hint of complaint. She is 54 and superintendent of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, a unit of the National Park Service. The King holiday is her Super Bowl. Thousands will make their way Monday to Auburn Avenue, just east of downtown Atlanta, to bear witness at King's outdoor crypt, and to tour his birth home. They will crowd into the civil rights history display underneath Forte's office, and the meticulously preserved old Ebenezer Baptist Church across the street, where King preached and plotted his nonviolent revolution.

Boeing Co. announced plans to close its long-standing facility in Wichita, Kan., where the company works on B-52 Stratofortress bombers and aerial refueling tankers. The company's historic facility in Wichita has played a large role in city's claim to be the Air Capital of the World. During World War II, the Boeing complex churned out B-29 Superfortress bombers and later the larger B-52s. More than 2,160 people are employed at the facility. Boeing said work will gradually be scaled down before it is officially closed by the end of next year.

Glen Settle, 97, knew he had to act fast. The concrete marker on the grave of his sister Aileen, who died in 1918 at just 3 days old, was worn and faded. It needed to be replaced. So earlier this month, a friend helped Settle erect a new gray granite stone engraved with a baby angel at the plot in the Historic Palmdale Cemetery.

For more than half a century Americans have celebrated the first week in February as Black History Week. The idea was conceived in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson, the Harvard-educated black scholar and author. In recent years the celebration of Black History Week has been extended to Black History Month. It is a time when schools, churches, civic organizations and individuals search for ways to acknowledge the accomplishments of Afro-Americans.

For half a century, the sprawling 110-acre aerospace complex in Redondo Beach has played host to the development of the nation's most advanced and secret spacecraft. Known as Space Park, the site was built at the height of the Cold War after the launch of Sputnik for engineers to develop a high-powered rocket that could deliver a nuclear warhead 6,000 miles away in less than an hour to virtually wipe out an entire city: the intercontinental ballistic missile. The complex's 47 buildings have served as a nerve center for the development and construction of high-powered lasers, cutting-edge electronics and sophisticated spacecraft.

On a day when the price of gold soared above $1,700 an ounce, Jack Shipley drove past tourists strolling through this historic Eastern Sierra mining camp and up a rutted road to where a new breed of prospectors have set their sights. The Bodie Hills hug the California-Nevada line in Mono County -- thousands of acres of jagged volcanic summits, thick sagebrush, dry lakes and plunging canyons lined with aspens. The hills are a paradox: Empty and wild yet shot through with hundreds of untapped mining claims dating to the 19th century.