it's my belief that to truly understand a community you have to understand where it's Roots came from the city does a tremendous job when they do something like right here we're at the new Hamlet Park okay they asked for our idea of who we wanted it named after and we came up with uh William Crockett he's an MIA a missing in action of the Vietnam War he graduated from the old Park High School in ' 64 we are here today to command memorate a special plaque for a very special person in the name of William Crockett bill or Billy as he was known by his family was a resident of Cottage Grove it was just a great moment we had uh over 40 people here five or six classmates his family the advisory committee on historic preservation is a group of individuals in Cottage Grove that serve with the city and our goal is not only to promote the historical culture of the community but also to make sure that the sites in the city that kind of bring this historical meaning are preserved not just for our generation but future generations to come we have a number of uh sites that they've listed out for us and we get to vote our opinion about them they don't always go by it but we make our recommendation that's what we do is make recommendations when Dodge Nature Center was going to develop Shepherd Farm they came to us to make sure that what they were doing fit with guidelines for the history of the property and they've done a wonderful job we've heard lots of stories over the last couple years too about you know people in Cottage Grove are very familiar with Cedar Hurst and Ferber and hope Glenn like these are these are sites that I'm quite familiar with I've worked in two of them when they were wedding venur and it's these sites that have all at one time or another have come through the ACB uh and kind of discuss the changes they want to make on site and it's our role as a as a committee to make sure that the core is maintain while you're still moving forward in in another purpose and every year we get to uh suggest to them the historic preservationist of the Year Cindy a and her sister Kathy dear literally uncovering the cemetery yeah the city they want people to know about the history so they have a display case at City Hall and I want people to get up there at City Hall right now they're featuring the four old schools there's so much more work left you know we have a great railroad history we have a military Road history he all predated any kind of development here outside of farmers and old Cottage grow our doors are open we always have public comment period we want to hear your stories come to the ACP and if you can't do that email or even send us some photos we we all love hearing it and that's the way that we really can help preserving some of these sites that uh we might not be aware of for [Music]