Principal / President
- M.A. United States and the American West, University of California, Davis
- B.A. History, University of Washington, Seattle
- 35 Years Experience
- Qualifies as historian/architectural historian under the United States Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualification Standards (as defined in 36 CFR Part 61)
As a founding partner of JRP, Mr. Wee has been a key element in building the firm over a period of thirty years into one of the most successful historical consulting firms in the country. He has served as a consulting historian, principal investigator and project manager on hundreds of historical research investigations for federal, state and local agencies and private companies. As a consulting historian, Mr. Wee has special interest and expertise in the history of California and the American West and the history of environmental, natural resources and water issues in these regions.
Mr. Wee has testified as an expert historian in the Superior Courts of California for Sacramento and Kern counties and has testified and/or submitted written testimony as an expert witness before the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of California; in the Snake River Drainage Basin Adjudication, 5th Judicial District of the State of Idaho; for various water rights hearings before the California State Water Resources Control Board, Division of Water Rights; in the San Pedro-Gila River Adjudication, Maricopa County Superior Court, Arizona; and before the Hearing Office Panel for the State of Oregon Water Resources Department in the Klamath River Adjudication.
JRP and Mr. Wee have provided expert historian services to a broad spectrum of clients including many federal, state and local governmental agencies; municipalities; private corporations; public utility companies; natural resources and water rights attorneys; individual land owners and water users; water resources agencies; mutual water companies; irrigation and water districts; and engineering/environmental consulting firms. Among the types of water-related studies undertaken as a consulting and expert historian have been: riparian and pre-1914 appropriative water rights investigations; histories of the development of water systems for irrigation, municipal, mining, hydroelectric power, and other uses; federal reserved water rights on Indian reservations, military reservations, and national forests; water rights due diligence studies for real estate transactions; historical research related to water boundary investigations; legislative histories; pueblo water rights; histories of inland commercial navigation on California rivers and lakes; and reclamation, flood control, flood management and flooding histories.
Mr. Wee has also worked as a consulting historian on numerous historic resources management projects over the past thirty years. Many of these projects have involved inventory, evaluation, and nomination of historic properties under California Register and National Register criteria; compliance under federal Section 106 of the NHPA and under state CEQA guidelines; and development of historic resources agreement documents, management plans and mitigation programs. Based on his level of education and experience, Mr. Wee qualifies as a historian/architectural historian under the United States Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualification Standards (as defined in 36 CFR Part 61).
Mr. Wee received a Master of Arts Degree in History (United States and the American West) from the University of California, Davis and a Bachelor of Arts in History (Magna Cum Laude) from the University of Washington in Seattle. Currently the president of JRP Historical Consulting, LLC, Mr. Wee was one of the founding partners of Jackson Research Projects in 1981 and has remained a principal of that firm’s various successors-in-interest over the past thirty years. Mr. Wee has served on several state and local commissions and on the boards of professional service organizations, including: the Information Center Procedural Advisory Committee, a Standing Committee of the California Office of Historic Preservation and the California State Historic Resources Commission; Board of Directors, Executive Committee, and Chairman of the Legislative Action Committee, California Council for the Promotion of History; and Commissioner of the Historical Resources Commission, City of Davis. Mr. Wee is a member of the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History and its state affiliate the California Council for the Promotion of History, the Western History Association, the Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society, and the California Historical Society.