With the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 and ensuing regulatory guidelines, a mandate for the development of The State Historic Preservation Plan was clearly established. During the late 1960s and the 1970s, because of limited funding and the absence of information on the structure of these plans, few states had formulated plans or if they had state plans, they were of an extremely general nature. In the 1980s, principally through funding initiatives on the part of the National Park Service and through the efforts of NPS preservation planners such as John Knoerl, many states began their first attempts at comprehensive preservation planning. One of the more highly acclaimed of these early planning documents was the Resource Protection Planning Process for Texas. The current eastern planning region document represents the culmination of over 10 years of preservation planning in the state of Texas
