Ashley Rogers, executive director of the nearby Whitney Plantation, said the decision to remove the Great River Road region from consideration for federally granted recognition was due to the “changing priorities” of the Trump administration, the latest blow to “a culture under attack.”.
Ramshackled homes and shuttered buildings in the area are endemic of longstanding underinvestment in these communities, but it's not too late to reverse this trend through means besides industrialization, said Joy Banner, co-founder of the local nonprofit The Descendants Project, which is restoring historical properties in Great River Road.
However, the determination was “premature and untimely” given that a grain terminal that threatened to impact historic properties was no longer planned, said the National Park Service’s Joy Beasley, who oversees the designation of historic landmarks, in a Feb. 13 letter to the Army Corps of Engineers.
A spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers said any future industrial development in the Great River Road would still need to consider the potential impacts on historical and cultural heritage.
A multi-year National Park Service study on the area completed in October concluded that the “exceptional integrity” of the Great River Road landscape conveys “the feeling of living and working in the plantation system in the American South.".
