Improvised Preservation: Heritage Recovery in Rural Post-Disaster Communities

Heritage preservation frameworks assume institutional infrastructure often absent in rural disaster contexts. Following Hurricane Helene in 2024, property owners in Marshall, NC navigated preservation decisions with limited professional support during critical intervention windows. Drawing on mixed-methods analysis of 21 heritage buildings and interviews with 16 community members, conducted 10 weeks post-disaster, this study examines how heritage recovery operated when institutional support proved inaccessible. Property owners developed preservation approaches through improvised bricolage, integrating knowledge from online research, community networks, and experimentation, with social capital functioning as makeshift preservation infrastructure. This necessity-driven stewardship achieved heritage-conscious outcomes selectively. Preservation success depended on alignment of timeline flexibility, financial capacity, and access to trusted validation, factors often beyond owner control. Outcomes correlated with network access rather than heritage significance or recovery need. Assistance programmes imposed compliance requirements more expensive and time-consuming than proceeding independently, discouraging preservation-oriented recovery. These patterns reveal structural incompatibilities between preservation governance and rural disaster realities. Current frameworks presume accessible expertise and support infrastructure that rural contexts demonstrably lack. When heritage designation offers regulatory protection without accessible support, it creates barriers rather than enabling preservation. Effective heritage recovery requires policy frameworks adapted to rural disaster realities, providing accessible support at disaster speed.