Kim Mailes is a loyal HistoriCorps volunteer and former Board Member
In 2015 I read a newspaper article about HistoriCorps restoring a homestead ranch in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and thought, I’d love to be involved in a project like that. A few weeks later I was part of a team installing a new roof on the bunkhouse — something I’d never done before — and I was hooked. There’s nothing like sitting bone-tired around a campfire at night after a hard day’s work sharing stories with volunteers from all across the nation, each committed to saving a historic place.
I continued to volunteer on more HistoriCorps projects all across the country, from stabilizing a 19th century grist mill beside a clear stream deep in the Ozarks, to restoring a Reconstruction era African American schoolhouse, and back to the Rockies to save a cabin once occupied by one of the first successful female ranchers in the Rockies. Along the way it became clear to me that losing these unique places would be abandoning touchstones that tell the American story.
Eventually I was asked to join the HistoriCorps board of directors and spent six years helping guide the organization through times that were truly triumphant — and dangerously precarious. Then the pandemic came along and nearly forced us into bankruptcy. Continued rapid growth required administrative adaptation and the addition of specialized personnel to keep up with the momentum.
I look back on those years with tremendous satisfaction. Hands-on, I did my part to save some truly important historic places. And as part of the leadership team, I helped navigate the organization to the pivotal place it occupies today as the nation’s premier volunteer historic preservation workforce.
HistoriCorps can rightly celebrate our victories, but the best is yet to come. Saving and preserving important chapters of American history is a never-ending task and, more than ever before, HistoriCorps is strong and capable, ready to accept the challenge.
