When driving into the Village, you might have seen signs welcoming you to the Waterford National Historic Landmark. These signs are placed at the roads along the borders of the 1,420 acres that have been deemed the National Historic Landmark of Waterford, Virginia. You might have also seen a plaque on stones at various sites around the United States, including here in the Village of Waterford at the Village Green, marking the site as a National Historic Landmark. But what does that even mean?
What does “National Historic Landmark” mean?
A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a designation bestowed to places that are deemed by the Secretary of the Interior to be both (a) nationally significant in interpreting American history and/or culture and (b) possesses a high degree of historic integrity in factors such as setting, materials, craftsmanship, and feeling. It’s the highest historic designation that a place can receive- surpassing the local, state, and federal historic register designations. In short, NHLs are places that have been deemed to be incredibly preserved and integral in sharing the American story. Like the National Register of Historic Places, the program is managed by the National Park Service.
As of 2026, there are over 2,600 historic buildings, sites, structures, objects, and districts that have been designated a National Historic Landmark since the program creation in the early 1960s. Virginia alone has 126; including Mount Vernon, Monticello, Natural Bridge, Williamsburg Historic District, and of course the Waterford District. Other local NHLs you can explore include the Ball’s Bluff Battlefield, Alexandria Historic District, the General George C Marshall House, and Oatlands.
How does a National Historic Landmark get chosen?
First, the considered district, site, building, structure, or object must meet the qualifications of the NHL program. This means that the nomination must be able to exhibit and interpret American history, architecture, technology and innovation, and/or culture (this being it’s significance). The considered nomination must meet at least one of the six criteria for national significance: connected to major events in American history (EX: Ball’s Bluff), associated with individuals that have made significant contributions to American history (EX: Mount Vernon), represent a great idea or ideal of the American people, exceptional design and architectural importance (EX: Fallingwater), environmentally significant, and possesses significant archaeological potential. Secondly, the proposed nomination must also possess a high level of historic integrity (the seven aspects being location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association) to support the interpretation of the site. A district, site, building, structure, or object that meet these qualifications can be nominated to the National Historic Landmark program by being identified through theme or special studies (like women’s history, labor history, Civil War, or the American Revolution) conducted by the National Park Service; or through being nominated by other federal agencies, State Historic Preservation Officers (in Virginia, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources), and/or other historic agencies and individuals.
Once a complete nomination is received by the National Park Service, it is reviewed by the NPS and the National Park System Advisory Board. The Advisory Board is put together of national leaders in preservation and conservation. When they meet, they look over the nominations and make recommendations to the Secretary of the Interior on which nominations to become a National Historic Landmark. The Secretary of the Interior makes the final decisions in which of the nominations are accepted into the National Historic Landmark program.
Diving into the Waterford National Historic Landmark
In 1970, 1,420 acres including the historic village of Waterford and the surrounding forested area and farmland (known in the application as the Waterford Historic District) was designated a National Historic Landmark. It was one of the first nominations to include the surrounding landscape as part of the significance. The Waterford Historic District was determined to be nationally significant as an intact example of an early American rural industrial village and surrounding landscape. The preserved architecture, materials, setting, and feeling supported the application.
The Waterford Historic District went back in front of the National Park System Advisory Board in 2023 to update the Landmark designation. Between 1970 and 2023, the Landmark program was expanded and nomination documents became more in-depth. This update dived deeper into the history and architecture of the area to include more properties as significant to the Landmark, and to include the preservation story of Waterford as a period of significance as well. The Landmark nomination was officially updated in 2023; highlighting again the importance of the intact rural village and the history of the area, but as well the community led preservation movement of the area.
As stated in the 2023 updated Landmark nomination, “The Waterford Historic District is significant under National Historic Landmark Criteria 4 and 5 as an exceptionally well-preserved example of a common settlement type- an agricultural service village- that emerged in rural areas during the American market revolution of the first half of the nineteenth century, especially in grain-based farming regions like the Upland South. Though villages serving farm communities are common throughout the United States and still form much of its cultural fabric today, early forms of these agricultural villages, originating in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and still exhibiting their architecture, setting, and layout from that era, rarely survive intact- especially without substantial later intrusions or loss of their rural settings. Waterford is exceptional for its retention of not only its village core, including its early street patterns and architecture, but also the surrounding open space and agricultural area. Waterford survives an intact agricultural service village landscape able to evoke the economic, architectural, aesthetic, and cultural patterns characteristic of America’s pre-urbanized history.
The Waterford Historic District is also nationally significant under National Historic Landmark Criterion 1, for the sustained and creative, locally-led twentieth-century historic preservation campaign that ensured its present high degree of integrity. Waterford’s remarkably intact village architecture and expansive agricultural setting survives with such high integrity due to a multipronged and intensive campaign that employed several emerging preservation approaches and a diverse set of preservation tools. Spearheaded by private citizens that, in 1943, formed the community non-profit Waterford Foundation, this decades-long collaborative effort represents a laboratory for experimental private preservation strategies that resulted in the conservation of a living landscape where most properties, unlike in a museum restoration like Colonial Williamsburg, have remained in private ownership.” (Waterford Historic District National Landmark Nomination 2023, Page Three)
Sources:
National Park Service, National Historic Landmark Program
Waterford Historic District National Historic Landmark Nomination, 2023, National Park Service: https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/702383