Historic landscapes can range from thousands of acres of rural tracts to a small homestead with a front yard of less than one acre. Like historic buildings and structures, these special places reveal aspects of our country's origins and development through their form and features and the way they were used. In fact, almost every historic property has a landscape component. Imagine a residential district without sidewalks, lawns, and trees or an agricultural complex with buildings, but no fields, garden plots, or hedge rows! Like other historic properties, America's historic landscapes are subject to loss and change through inappropriate uses, insensitive development, vandalism, and natural forces such as flooding.