Statement of significance Memorial Park is a representative example of park planning and design during the first half of the twentieth century and of the distinctive ways in which the country’s most important municipal parklands have been managed over time. Its design shares in the lineage of the Olmsted legacy, and is a representative example of the important planning and design work that Hare & Hare produced in twentieth century Houston.
Criterion D. Properties that have yielded or are likely to yield information important to prehistory or history. The most common type of site considered eligible using Criterion D is an archaeological site. This is the case for Memorial Park and the applicability of Criterion D. Memorial Park has had a considerable amount of archaeological study and some exploration; some areas have been identified as potentially valuable for archaeological information. In actuality, the entire Memorial Park site has been used by humans for several generations, and the entire park was once part of Camp Logan. Because of the large size of the park, thorough archaeological exploration is not feasible and the results would not warrant the expense. Parts of the park have been disturbed over time much more so than others, jeopardizing the potential to yield subsurface evidence. Because of this, previous work (reviewed below) has been used to delimit the parts of the park that have been determined to be most important for archaeology. Roger Moore et.al.’s “Survey of Nine Land Units within Memorial Park,”1989 The first archaeological exploration was “An Archaeological Survey of Nine Land Units within Memorial Park in Houston (Harris County), Texas,” by Roger G. Moore, William E. Moore, and David S. Pettus, dated April, 1989. The nine parcels were studied because the City of Houston intended to have plans developed for the development of these units. These tracts comprise 365.3 acres or 26 percent of the park (Moore, 1).
129