 In the Register's earliest years, the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPO were small, understaffed and underfunded.Indeed, money was tight, but funds were still being supplied for the Historic Preservation Fund to provide matching grants-in-aid to listed property owners, first in house museums and institutional buildings but later in commercial structures as well.During this time period, the SHPO had little time to devote to serious planning, even if it wanted to; the demands of saving historic properties and building the organizations from the ground up consumed most of the early state office's resources.