Information regarding the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) is now available under “Professional Practice” on the ASLA website. HALS information was previously located under “Advocacy.” The relocation is consistent with the provisions of the 2010 Tripartite Agreement among ASLA, the National Park Service, and the Library of Congress. The Tripartite Agreement replaces an earlier Memorandum of Understanding among the signers that created HALS as a temporary program. The Tripartite Agreement made it permanent.

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The HALS program was established to document historic landscapes in the United States and its territories as tangible evidence of our nation’s heritage and development. Historic landscapes vary in size from small gardens to several thousand-acre national parks. In character they range from designed to vernacular, rural to urban, and agricultural to industrial spaces. Vegetable patches, estate gardens, cemeteries, farms, quarries, nuclear test sites, suburbs, and abandoned settlements all may be considered historic landscapes. Like its sister programs, the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), HALS produces written and graphic records of interest to educators, land managers, and preservation planners.

With this move, the HALS page is revamped to highlight the various features of the program so they are easier to identify and review.