A Reconnaisance Inventory of Air Combat Command Cold War Material Culture

Mariah Associates, Inc. (Mariah), under contract with the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District, is conducting a reconnaissance inventory of Cold War material culture on selected Air Force bases throughout the continental United States and in Panama for the Air Combat Command (ACC (Figure 1.1). As each base is inventoried, a report is completed. Once all 27 bases in the study have been inventoried, a final report will be compiled integrating all evaluated resources and assessing them for significance at the national level.
Prior to the initiation of base inventories, Mariah developed a historic context for the Cold War and a methodology for assessment of Cold War material culture (Johnson et al. 1994). The historic context sets the framework for developing individual base Cold War contexts, evaluating resources, and defining significance, and the methodology defines how to conduct the inventory and evaluation. U sing the historic context, the methodology also defines four temporal phases of the Cold War to aid in evaluating resources. The phases are delineated based on significant Cold War events and related developments in U.S. government policy and military strategy. The overall goal of the Cold War study is to comply with Section 110 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHP A) of 1966. Section 110 requires federal agencies to inventory cultural resources under their control and evaluate those that are significant or potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The reports produced by this project will provide a tool for ACC to use in determining which resources are eligible for the NRHP and in selecting a number of these resources to be nominated to the NRHP. This report is a reconnaissance inventory of Cold War related resources on Shaw Air Force Base (AFB). Shaw AFB, a former Tactical Air Command (TAC) installation, is one of the bases being evaluated in the attempt to determine the extent of ACC Cold War cultural resources nationwide. As described above, a final report will synthesize the individual base reports and provide initial management recommendations for evaluated resources.