UPDATE on Partners:
Texas Sacred Places Project
IN THE SPRING OF 2009 Texas Tech University Professor
Gary Smith led his Conservation Policies class in a new
direction. Instead of examining the roles of local, state
and Federal government in historic preservation, Smith
and his 12 students rolled up their sleeves and embarked
on a field study of historic religious buildings. Smith’s idea
was born out of a relationship with Partners’ Texas Sacred
Places Project - a collaborative initiative to strengthen
the public’s understanding of the importance of sacred
places through the development of an interactive website,
a documentary survey, heritage tourism plans, and a
publicly-accessible database of sacred places in Texas. The
professor