Note: As of 2018, the 5-year plan beginning in 2018 is still being prepared.

This Statewide Historic Preservation Plan for California (State Plan) is intended to guide the activities and priorities of agencies and organizations involved in preservation in the Golden State during the years 2013 through 2017. The next five years will mark pivotal anniversaries in American history and the development of historic preservation, and these milestones provide California preservationists with opportunities to get our message out to a wider public within broader national contexts. The year 2014 is the 50th anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act, as well as the sesquicentennial of the establishment of California's State Park System. The sesquicentennial of the end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln takes place in 2015. The year 2016 will mark the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act. Finally, 2017 represents the 25th anniversary of important amendments made to the act, including those that created the Tribal Historic Preservation Officers program, which more formally brought into the federal preservation program the vast amount of information and expertise held by tribes and their members.

In order to be successful, this plan should be the starting point for developing subsequent specific strategic or action plans developed by and for individual agencies and organizations. For example, the California Office of Historic Preservation, which authored this plan, will develop annual work plans that list specific activities the office will undertake in each of the next five years in order to help fulfill the goals and objectives in the State Plan. The suggested activities listed below for each goal and its corresponding set of objectives are intended to help preservationists identify the types of actions they can take in support of this plan.

Readers of previous State Plans will find this current plan takes a different approach from its predecessors (see below for information about past State Plans prepared for California). Rather than focusing on specific issues and developing goals and objectives to address each issue, this plan takes a more holistic approach to defining how we can all work to help achieve a common vision for preservation in California. For this reason, the plan discusses and defines that vision before then identifying a set of broad goals and objectives to help achieve this vision. Issues that are currently most important to preservationists are then addressed. These issues are also discussed in relation to specific resource types, where appropriate, in the section below titled "Historical Resources of California, An Overview." Finally, readers will find Preservation Success Stories sprinkled throughout this document — these vignettes were developed by Office of Historic Preservation staff and are intended to provide specific examples of successful preservation efforts as they relate to various preservation programs.