Traditional Trades Advancement Program at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park

American Conservation Experience (ACE) and the National Park Service (NPS) are training members of the Traditional Trades Advancement Program at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park to preserve historic structures using endangered craftsmanship. This partnership provides hands-on vocational experience in masonry, carpentry, and other traditional building trades to address a critical skills gap in national park maintenance.

The program operates as a collaboration between the NPS and ACE, a nonprofit organization that recruits and manages the corps members participating in the training. According to program summaries, these members work directly on the historic buildings and landscapes of the Vermont-based park to learn techniques that are no longer common in modern construction.

What is the Traditional Trades Advancement Program?

The Traditional Trades Advancement Program is a specialized workforce development initiative designed to transfer knowledge from retiring master craftspeople to a new generation of preservationists. The program focuses on “traditional trades,” which the National Park Service defines as the manual skills required to maintain and restore historic architecture using period-appropriate materials and methods.

Members of the program are placed at specific NPS sites, such as the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, where they receive mentorship from experienced park technicians and historians. This model differs from standard internships by emphasizing professional certification and long-term career placement in the historic preservation field.

ACE manages the administrative and recruitment side of the program. The nonprofit provides the logistics, stipends, and support systems that allow corps members to focus on the technical aspects of the trade. This structure allows the NPS to scale its preservation efforts without the immediate overhead of permanent staffing for every specialized project.

Which skills are taught at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park?

The training at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller focuses on the specific materials and styles found within its historic landscape. Because the park is dedicated to the history of conservation and forestry, the trades taught often overlap with land management and structural stability.

According to program documentation, the core skills taught include:

These tasks aren’t just maintenance; they’re restorations. Members learn why certain materials, like lime-based mortars, are essential for old buildings. Using modern Portland cement on a historic stone wall can cause the original stones to crack because the modern material is too rigid, according to preservation standards used by the NPS.

Why is the preservation of traditional trades necessary?

The NPS faces a systemic loss of institutional knowledge as its senior maintenance staff reaches retirement age. Many of the skills required to maintain 18th- and 19th-century structures aren’t taught in modern trade schools, which prioritize speed and standardized industrial materials.

This creates a reliance on expensive outside contractors who may not always adhere to the strict Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. By training internal corps members through the ACE partnership, the NPS creates a sustainable pipeline of skilled labor that understands the specific regulatory requirements of national parks.

The shortage of these skills is often described as an “endangered” trade crisis. When a specific method of joinery or a particular way of mixing plaster is forgotten, the cost of repairing a historic building rises because the work must be researched and reverse-engineered from scratch.

How does the ACE nonprofit model support this training?

American Conservation Experience uses a corps-based model to lower the barrier to entry for young professionals. By providing a stipend, ACE allows participants to gain high-level vocational training without the immediate financial pressure of a full-time salary during the learning phase.

The partnership ensures that the training is not purely theoretical. Members are embedded in the park’s daily operations, meaning they’re responsible for real-world outcomes. If a stone wall at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller collapses, the program members are the ones tasked with the repair under supervision.

This approach transforms the park into a living classroom. The result is a dual benefit: the park’s historic assets are maintained, and the participants leave with a portfolio of verified work that makes them competitive for permanent federal or private preservation roles.