AmaTerra Cultural Resource Staff recognized in NMHPO's 2018 Heritage Organization Award

AmaTerra Architectural Historian, Kurt Korfmacher, and Archaeological Principal Investigator, Rachel Feit were in Santa Fe on May 11th to attend the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee’s 2018 Heritage Preservation Awards. Kurt and Rachel were privileged to join White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) Cultural Resources Program Manager, Bill Godby, and fellow subcontractor, Epsilon Systems Solutions, in receiving the 2018 Heritage Organization Award from the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office (NM SHPO). This award recognized Godby’s team’s work developing superlative historic contexts and resource reports associated with complex Cold War-era military testing systems and facilities at WSMR in New Mexico and WSMR’s sister facility, the Green River Test Site in Utah.

WSMR Environmental Division Branch Chief Brian Knight, left-center, WSMR Culutural Resources Program Manager Bill Godby, right-center, along with employees from Epsilon Systems Solutions, Inc. and AmaTerra Environmental, Inc. accepted a Heritage Organization Award from the State Historic Preservation Office. From left to right: Nate Myers, Phil Esser, Brian Knight, Bill Godby, Rachel Feit and Kurt Korfmacher

State Historic Preservation Officer Jeff Pappas.was quoted in an article discussing the award: "Out of all of the Department of Defense, Department of Education and the Parks Services, these WSMR reports are by far the best historic contexts I've seen. This is the biggest commitment to research we've seen in quite a few years."

AmaTerra has been privileged to work with WSMR providing installation-wide support for cultural resource-related services, the products of which prompted New Mexico’s National Register Coordinator Steven Moffson to nominate Godby and the team. Kurt researched and documented remnants of WSMR’s optical instrumentation systems such as cinetheodolites and tracking telescopes, which were used to track missile test flight paths and performance during height of the Cold War. Click here to see an interactive summary of Kurt’s research that is currently housed at WSMR’s Museum as an interactive display kiosk. Rachel developed exhaustive historical summaries and archeological and historic feature documentation of Utah’s Green River Test Site, a former mine that was repurposed to launch Athena and Pershing missiles into WSMR into the 1970s.