The surveys in this collection are primarily the result of two years effort by the Historic Preservation Office of the Department of Geography & Geology at Eastern Michigan University to produce a complete rural building survey of historic properties in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Because the original survey was of rural buildings, only the undeveloped township areas were originally covered; as opposed to city, towns, villages, or other home rule municipalities. Additionally, not all townships were covered in the first survey effort, with 18½ of the 20 townships originally being surveyed.

Funded in part through a grant from the US Department of the Interior’s Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service (under provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966) through the Michigan Department of State, the surveys were conducted primarily by graduate students in the “GEO 636” class at Eastern Michigan University. Started in 1981, the survey project was led by Dr. Marshall McLennan, then head of the Historic Preservation Program, as well as Andrew Nazzaro, and Robert Haswell, and graduate assistants Karen Bean and Katherine Moberg. The survey was conducted as a “windshield” type survey. A complete history of the project is outlined in McLennan’s draft completion report, “Washtenaw County Rural Building Survey,” included in this collection [Box 8, Folder 3].

The rural building survey ultimately filled the need of the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office (MI-SHPO) and the Washtenaw County Historic District Commission for a broad reconnaissance survey of historic properties in Washtenaw County. According to Dr. McLennan a copy was sent to the Michigan State Archive, as well as the MI-SHPO. Since 1982, survey standards for historic properties in the State of Michigan have developed considerably. While these surveys were conducted to professional preservation standards, they do not reflect later, official standards and were incorporated into future databases differently. It is worth noting that this survey was created to be input into a database program before the State of Michigan developed such a database. Several additional surveys in Washtenaw County were also executed by graduate students as both class and final projects. These additional surveys often used the same survey cards of the original rural building survey and were ultimately included with the original materials.

Washtenaw County acquired this extended collection of surveys from the Historic Preservation Program in the late 1990s when they were in danger of being lost due to storage space concerns. The County incorporated the surveys into a cutting edge project by eWashtenaw called The Historic Resource Database (HistWeb). A list of people who worked on the project follows: Project Coordinator: Marnie Paulus GIS Coordinator: Kim Wraight ITS Programmer: Jack Overhiser SHPO Partners: Teresa Goforth, Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock GIS Consultants: Keith Croteau, Jim Bennett WCHDC Consultants: Marshall McLennan, Ted Ligibel, Mary Culver, Sally Bund and Ina Hanel WCHDC Technicians: Anne Kreykes, Kathy Holtz, Michelle Cyrus and Barry Wauldron ITS Consultants: Jim Burkey, Sheryl Stefanski, Shawn Stemen, Yang Meng, Nancy Pearlman, Marian Thurman, David Mote, Lois Merit Web Content Coordinator: Charley Wolfe Volunteers: Bob Kellum, Don Riddering, Jasper Pennington, Janet Cowling, Kathy Duquette, Karl Williams, Louisa Pieper, Marsha Ticknor GIS Interns: Nate Arnold, Josh Goldstein, Todd Bootz, Patty Fries

In March of 2012 the survey materials were transferred back to the Eastern Michigan University Archive's Historic Preservation Special Collection for permanent storage. Additional survey materials and accompanying student reports covering Washtenaw County were transferred from the Historic Preservation Program; and while they were outside of the original project they were included with the materials given to eWashtnaw, and are therefore included in this collection.