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    <copyright>Copyright © 2026. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.</copyright>
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    <managingEditor>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</managingEditor>
    <webMaster>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</webMaster>
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      <title>Mapping Historic Burial Sites</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2784609</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) is committed to planning and implementing 24 projects that avoid, mitigate, or eliminate negative impacts to cultural and historical resources important 25 to North Carolina communities. RP2025-11 -“Cemetery Mapping”, the project team engaged state 26 officials, historic preservation experts, and local communities in a county-level case study (Edgecombe 27 County) to increase NCDOT’s abilities to acknowledge, protect, and preserve known and unmapped 28 burial sites, and to engage current community members in these efforts. Project results included 29 expanding mapping datasets for cemeteries and burial sites, researching and compiling common 30 characteristics of historic burial sites, designing and implementing a community engagement 31 methodology, and identifying relevant procedural and systemic factors that affect the preservation of NC 32 burial sites. ​]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 10:18:52 GMT</pubDate>
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      <title>Pittsylvania County Road Orders 1767-1783</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2702871</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Road history projects undertaken by VTRC establish the feasibility of studies of early road networks and their use in the environmental review process.  This proposed volume marks the 33rd entry in the Historic Roads of Virginia series, initiated in 1973 by the Virginia Highway & Transportation Research Council (subsequently VTRC). Pittsylvania County Road Orders 1767-1783 will further the coverage of the early southern Virginia transportation records begun in the previously published Brunswick County Road Orders 1732-1749, Lunenburg County Road Orders 1746-1764, Amelia County Road Orders 1735-1753, and Halifax County Road Orders 1752-1767.

This volume covers the period of Pittsylvania County’s greatest extent, from its creation from Halifax County in 1767, through its division to create Henry County in 1777, and extending to the end of the Revolutionary War, which saw significant military contributions, including essential supply centers, in Pittsylvania. By the second half of the 18th century, Pittsylvania County contained important east-west and north-south transportation routes. The county’s early transportation records provide information relating to transportation connections not only with neighboring counties and other counties farther to the north, east and west in Virginia, but also with with neighboring North Carolina. This publication will have particular application to the cultural resource research relating to transportation projects in this area of southern Virginia. 

If questions arise about early roads once a VDOT road improvement project is already underway (or nearly underway), primary historical research of this nature can take 6 to 12 months to complete. Therefore, this volume can be a source of potentially significant cost savings for VDOT, including the avoided costs of project delays and avoided consultant costs for cultural resource studies should questions arise. 
]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 10:58:04 GMT</pubDate>
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      <title>Synthesis of VDOT Historic Bridge Survey, Review, and Management Information</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2561782</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Since the 1970s, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), through the Virginia Transportation Research Council (VTRC) has conducted studies to manage its historically significant bridges as well as developing (and updating periodically) a statewide historic bridge management plan and conducting studies on rehabilitating and moving historic truss bridges, truss bridge eye bar deterioration, and feasibility of alternative uses.  Further, specific projects relating to individual bridges are covered by separate guidance documents, cultural resource reviews, Memoranda of Agreement (MOA), or by Programmatic Agreement (PA) documents.  These surveys, projects, and agreements are documented by various VTRC survey files, reports, and memos, as well as documents filed in VDOT district Environmental offices and VDOT Environmental Division files in VDOT's Central Office.  However, there is no one document containing this information.

In the late 2010s, VDOT’s Central Office cultural resource staff identified a need for a synthesis document that would consolidate information regarding historic bridges.  The lack of such a synthesis resulted in gaps in the cultural resource records regarding these bridges, which is problematic for newer VDOT personnel who periodically must put together information on the previous projects that have involved these bridges.  Phase I of this synthesis, collecting information from the initial and early VDOT/VTRC historic bridge projects (covering 1972-1993), was completed in 2022.  This Phase 2 will continue the collection of this information from 1993 to the present, such that this report will be a final synthesis report covering 1972 to the present.  This report will contain data on the cultural resource surveys, reviews, studies, management plans, published reports and agreements, including MOAs and PAs.  Because a VDOT-specific synthesis like this has not been published before, this report could be a model for future updates based on additional historic bridge surveys, reviews, and management projects. 
]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 05 Jun 2025 10:34:33 GMT</pubDate>
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