As we leave 2016 and the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) behind, we pause to reflect on the NHPA and its role in shaping the preservation movement over the last half-century. Like other legislation conceived and enacted in the time of President Johnson’s Great Society, the NHPA exemplified the optimism and progressive vision of the era and has considerably shaped the landscape of the country we know today. In this issue of the Forum Journal, we seek to represent the breadth the NHPA and the programs it initiated, examining its many accomplishments as well as its unfulfilled potential.