National Historic Preservation Month
Cultural Resources Management (CRM) at NASA
The Oak Grove Revitalization Project in the Burro Flats Cultural District of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) highlights NASA’s commitment to partnering with local entities to support the responsible stewardship of cultural resources. These entities include Native American tribes, whose cultural heritage and sacred places are not always obvious to non-Native people.
SSFL is located in an area rich with significant Native American cultural resources, including archaeological sites, features, and some of the best-preserved pictographs in southern California. Native American Tribes including the Chumash, Fernandeño- Tataviam, and Gabrieleño-Kizh have identified the SSFL as a Traditional Cultural Property/Traditional Cultural Landscape (TCP/TCL) and Sacred Site under Executive Order 13007, and continue to use the area today for ceremonies. NASA nominated the Burro Flats Cultural District to the National Register of Historic Places in November 2021.
Within the Burro Flats Cultural District is a grove of coastal live oak trees, which the Tribes identified as culturally significant, and a contributing element of the TCP/TCL. In 2018, the Woolsey Fire swept through the area and destroyed much of the grove. In hopes of revitalizing the grove, and in consultation with the Tribes, the NASA SSFL team gathered thousands of acorns from the area and has begun growing seedlings in an onsite greenhouse and transplanting them to the original grove location. SSFL continues to plant the young saplings every fall to supplement the recovering coastal live oak population and help restore a culturally-significant place.
Learn more about this project and others in the FY 21-23 NASA “Preserve America” Triennial Report!
