METHODOLOGY

Currently, the Berks County Conservancy is working on the preparation of a conservation plan for the Manatawny Creek watershed, a tributary of the Schuylkill River and the heart of the Oley Valley. Funded by the Keystone Rivers Program, a part of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the conservation plan will contain information on the physical and geological composition of the Manatawny Creek as well as its influence on the local land use and other activities within the watershed. One component of the conservation plan is the cultural resources located within the Manatawny Creek watershed. The cultural resources can be categorized into two sections; recreational data and historical sites, structures, and/or districts

Other conservancy groups have also undertaken similar studies. The Brandywine Conservancy in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania is one current example. The conservancy purchased over 18,000 acres of easements in order to protect the Chadds Ford region from urban sprawl (Wright 1994). The Brandywine Conservancy is greatly involved in historic preservation. The Conservancy helps prepare historic district ordinances and advises architectural review boards. It also provides technical assistance for the renovation and reuse of older structures for residential and commercial use through the Land Stewardship Program. The Wildlands Conservancy, which works in Berks, Carbon, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Wayne, and Wyoming counties, was recently awarded $150,000 to prepare a conservation plan for the Lehigh River watershed, a tributary of the Delaware River.

The Berks County Conservancy has a record in paper format of all the historic buildings located throughout the watershed within Berks County. Those historic buildings within Montgomery County are filed in the offices of the Montgomery County Planning Commission. These records are taken from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which is a part of the Bureau for Historical Preservation. The historic buildings are recorded using a Pennsylvania Historical Resource Survey form (Figure 5). This form provides such information as the property owner, property date, property style, site map, photograph, and a brief description.

Attribute data from these forms were processed in Excel. These attributes included the survey code, the historic name (when known), latitude and longitude, architectural style, and date. Exact geographic coordinates are provided on the PRHS forms for District, Pike, Rockland, and Ruscombmanor Townships. They are listed in UTM coordinates. The historic buildings with UTM coordinates were converted to latitude and longitude using the GeoCalc coordinate conversion software program. Global Positioning Systems (GPS) readings were taken for buildings that did not have geographic coordinate values. All data were converted in a dBase IV file which was imported into ArcView. ArcView software was used to store, manipulate, analyze, and display the locational data.  The locational data gathered for the historic buildings, along with a literature review on historic preservation, was used to analyze the feasablity of the possible expansion of the Oley Township Historic District and/or the designation of a historic scenic route.

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