Nathaniel Pyron on Cultural Resources and Section 106: Planning Around History on Military Installations

The historic clock tower of the Fort Sam Houston Quadrangle, a landmark that illustrates how historic assets shape military installation planning. (Stock photo)

Many of the buildings on a military installation are older than the base's oldest resident. Quonset huts from the 1940s, colonial-era barracks, Cold War radar domes, parade grounds that have hosted a century of formations — military installations are, whether anyone planned it that way, museums of American architecture and archaeology. When a federal agency undertakes a project on one of them, Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires the agency to consider the effects on historic properties. For the installation master planner, that means history is not a sentimental sidebar. It is a planning constraint, a design input, and — handled well — an asset.

What Section 106 actually requires

Section 106 is a process, not a veto. Before a federal undertaking — a new construction project, a demolition, a lease, a land transfer — the agency must identify historic properties that could be affected, assess whether the undertaking would have an adverse effect on them, and consult with the State Historic Preservation Officer (and, where applicable, tribal nations and other consulting parties) to resolve any adverse effects. The outcome can be a memorandum of agreement that spells out how the project proceeds: redesign, mitigation, documentation, or in some cases a finding that the effect is acceptable.

The critical planning lesson: Section 106 consultation takes time, and it belongs at the front of the project timeline, not at the permit stage. A master plan that flags historic districts, eligible buildings, and archaeological sensitivity zones lets project planners route early concepts around the hardest conflicts. A project that discovers a historic property during design is a project that gets delayed; a project that designed around one from the start gets built.

The installation's layered history

The cultural resources of a military installation are rarely one era deep. A single base can hold prehistoric archaeological sites, nineteenth-century frontier posts, World War II temporary construction, and Cold War infrastructure — sometimes on the same parcel. Installations manage this complexity through Integrated Cultural Resources Management Plans (ICRMPs), which inventory historic properties, establish management priorities, and set procedures for everything from routine maintenance in a historic district to emergency repairs.

The planner's practical concern is simpler: know what is historic before you draw over it. Historic status changes what a renovation costs, what materials are acceptable, what reviews apply, and sometimes whether a building can be altered at all. The master plan should show historic districts and individually eligible properties the same way it shows floodplains and clear zones — as a constraint layer that shapes every alternative. Nathaniel Pyron treats historic overlays as one of the first layers he checks on any installation project, because discovering them late is the most avoidable kind of delay in federal planning.

Tribal consultation is a relationship, not a checkbox

Where installations sit on or near tribal lands — or where undertakings may affect properties of traditional religious and cultural significance — consultation with tribal nations is required and, more importantly, expected to be genuine. Tribes are sovereign governments, not stakeholders, and the consultation is government-to-government. For the planner, this means building consultation time into the schedule from day one, respecting that tribal responses run on tribal timelines, and understanding that some concerns cannot be resolved by redesigning a parking lot.

Installations that maintain standing relationships with tribal cultural resource staff — regular meetings, site visits, collaborative surveys — find that project-level consultation goes smoothly. The trust was built before the project existed. The installations that struggle are the ones that meet their tribal partners for the first time over a controversial undertaking.

History as an asset, not just a constraint

There is a flip side that good planners exploit. Historic districts give installations character that no new construction can buy: the quadrangle, the band shell, the old headquarters row. Adaptive reuse of historic buildings — turning a 1930s barracks into offices, a motor pool into a fitness center — can be cheaper than new construction, qualifies for tax-credit structures in some cases, and preserves the installation's identity. The heritage tourism angle matters too: communities around bases often take pride in the installation's history, and open-house events at historic sites strengthen the civilian-military relationship.

Nathaniel Pyron's rule of thumb: on a military installation, the past is a land use. Map it, budget for it, consult on it early — and then use it. A base that plans with its history keeps its identity while it modernizes. A base that treats Section 106 as paperwork discovers, expensively, that history was always going to have the last word.

About the author

Nathaniel Pyron is a military urban planner specializing in military master planning with an airport/airfield focus. A U.S. Navy veteran who served in 1995, he later spent three years as a civilian community planner working with the U.S. Marine Corps at Camp Blaz and Darwin, Australia. He studied at the Arizona State University School of Urban Planning, class of 2007, and is an active LEED AP BD+C. Based in Honolulu, Hawaii, he writes about installation planning, airfield land use, and where military readiness meets community design. His LinkedIn title is Urban Planner (Land Use & Airspace).