From their website: “The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources” (https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/index.htm).

Administered by the National Parks Service under the Secretary of the Interior, the National Register provides guidance for evaluating, documenting, and listing places of historical significance. The National Register Bulletin 16A lists 4 criteria that qualify a property for National Register listing:

A. Property is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history.

B. Property is associated with the lives of persons significant in our past.

C. Property embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction or represents the work of a master, or possesses high artistic values, or represents a significant and distinguishable entity whose components lack individual distinction.

D. Property has yielded, or is likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

A nominated property does not need to meet all of the above criteria to be eligible for the National Register.

The Chippewa Valley properties detailed in these registration forms qualified for National Register listing overwhelmingly through criteria A and C. Properties that qualified through criterion A did so primarily because they were important in the community’s commercial history. Other properties were eligible because of their importance to the area’s ethnic heritage or because they were architecturally distinctive.