Documenting America’s Endangered Heritage

Don’t it always seem to go

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.

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Songwriter Joni Mitchell’s whimsical spin on the changes often wrought in the name of progress is the theme of a disquieting glimpse at the erosion of this country’s heritage in tonight’s History Channel special, “Save Our History: America’s Most Endangered 2002” (10 p.m.).

From the threat to sacred Indian sites in California’s Imperial Valley to a crumbling Washington, D.C., hospital that 150 years ago set new standards for architecture as well as care for the mentally ill, the hourlong special reports on a list of 11 subject areas that are facing extinction.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private, nonprofit membership organization based in Washington, D.C., has been coming up with the annual lists since 1988. And since the History Channel came on the air seven years later, it has dutifully reported on the yearly findings.

But if the idea is to summon the kind of passion in viewers that spurred Mitchell to write her song, the effort falls a little short. TV specials based on lists are usually only as strong as their weakest links, and there are several items tonight whose interest seems to be regional, at best.

One such segment involves the Chesapeake Bay skipjack fleet in Maryland. The picturesque wooden sailing ships have worked the bay’s waters for more than a century in search of oysters, but due largely to overfishing, only a handful of the original 100 ships are still used commercially.

Now, it’s a jolt when any industry undergoes change, and the ships look quite majestic under sail, but should this really be uppermost among our national concerns?

Another part of the problem may be in trying to cover 11 areas in a one-hour special, minus commercials. It’s difficult for any issue to capture your interest when the program is jumping to the next subject every few minutes.

The special is on firmer ground with its segment on the onetime 5,300-strong string of Rosenwald Schools, built by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald between 1913 and 1932 to help educate underserved African Americans youths. But questions about the mission of the schools, and the onset of integration mandates, led to the abandonment of most of the schools, and the few that survived are in terrible disrepair.

The tremendous impact of U.S. Army Corps of Engineer projects near Indian land in the Missouri River Valley areas of Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota is another of the stronger pieces. Erosion and lands flooded by government dam and reservoir projects have wreaked havoc with hundreds of archeological and historic sites in the region.

Something that might strike closer to home for many across the United States is the broadest topic of the night, the destruction of historic neighborhoods to make way for new cookie-cutter developments.

“America’s starting to look like Generica,” says Richard Moe, the national trust’s president, pointing to the bulldozing of thousands of Victorian houses to create room for a procession of massive, sterile “McMansions.” “Everything is starting to look the same.”

Maybe Mitchell was right.

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“Save Our History: America’s Most Endangered 2002” can be seen at 10 tonight on the History Channel.