In this talk, Janet Ore, professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at Montana State University, discusses the concept of historic preservation and its application to Bozeman. Historic preservation arose as a movement to protect built environments that provided the tangible expressions of identity. Americans realized that in times of rapid change, places invested with history, memory, and emotion gave them a sense of history that could be lost when the physical markers of the past were eradicated. For many today, their multi-centered lives have impelled them to seek places where the symbols of a more rooted, seemingly less complex, past remain. Bozeman now stands at this juxtaposition.

Recorded at Museum of the Rockies on September 12, 2016.