All Standing Structures and Archaeology Inventories are housed at the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) in the Administration Building in St. Paul. SHPO files are open to the public.
Note: Access to some information about archaeological sites is restricted by state and federal law.
Office hours are Tuesday-Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Please call ahead at 651-201-3287 to ensure that someone is available to help you find what you need.
Various types of cultural resource searches can be requested by e-mail. Follow SHPO's recommended guidelines and contact us with requests or questions.
The SHPO is able to handle by telephone small requests for photoduplication of files. For large files or complicated requests, you must make arrangements to do your own research and copying. Copy costs: $.20/page. To obtain reprints of photographs, see Image Price List.
Please note: research requests are answered in the order received and could take up to 30 days to complete. Please make sure you consider this as part of your project timeline. You are always welcome to search the inventory maps and records in person. SHPO is open Tuesday through Friday from 8:30 - 4 p.m.
Various types of cultural resource searches can be requested by e-mail. Results are generally e-mailed to the requestor in the form of Microsoft Word documents. Email datarequestshpo@state.mn.us with requests or questions.
When inquiring about a specific property, include:
Note: SHPO property records contain varying amounts of detail.
You may also be able to conduct your own property search using SHPO's National Register database.
You may request customized searches by fields such as property type, architect or style. For additional fields see the database metadata for standing structures or archaeology. If you can't find what you're looking for, please contact us.
SHPO staff can perform inventory database searches at the township/range/section level. At this time we do not have the ability to automatically buffer search requests. If you require buffers for your search area, include all contiguous areas that you wish to have searched. Please format large search requests in Excel spreadsheets.
You may also request a search of the databases for some 4,000 archaeological reports and 1,000 standing structures reports. To help you determine what kind of search to request, see the appropriate reports metadata to learn what types of data are collected.
Note: Access to some information about archaeological sites is restricted by state and federal law.
