November 21, 2005: During the program commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the closing of Topaz held in June, the Topaz Museum Board announced it was planning to purchase 92 acres of the Topaz site and bring eight more blocks under the protection of the non-profit board. Now six months later, the Topaz Museum Board is pleased to announce that the transaction closed on November 21, a fitting way to commemorate the anniversary year.

"The Board's campaign to raise money for the purchase was successful and gratifying. As a board we felt the support from so many people interested in saving the site," said Jane Beckwith, president of the Museum Board.

The Topaz group partnered with The Conservation Fund, an agency that is the nation's foremost environmental nonprofit organization. The CF has preserved historically significant sites including Civil War battlefields and most recently the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania. The Conservation Fund donated their portion of the land to the Topaz Museum Board.

Other agencies who helped raise money included the Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation, the Lunatique Fantastic puppet troupe, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Toru Saito, Fumi Hayashi, and Comcast.

The purchase of the land included two houses which will be moved from the property and 50 acre feet of water from the old Topaz well.

Prior to this campaign the Board acquired 522 acres of the 640 acreage of Topaz with the help of Aaron Peskin, President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and Pat Finlinson, an attorney from Delta, Utah.

"With these 92 acres, which includes blocks 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, 28, and 41, we are only missing four blocks of the site, 33, 34, 35 and 42," said Beckwith. "We are already working with another owner to obtain the remaining 26 acres."

The next phase of the Board's management plan is to work with the National Park Service on an application to become a National Historic Landmark. That process will take about a year to complete.

In the meantime, the Topaz group is moving forward to obtain land on Main Street in Delta, Utah to construct the Museum.

The Topaz Museum Board consists of ten volunteer members, Rick Okabe and Grace Oshita from Salt Lake City, Steve Koga from Ogden, Utah, Hisashi Bill Sugaya from San Francisco, Susan Stefanoff, Scott Bassett, Lance Atkinson, Lorilei Draper, Charlotte Morrison and Beckwith, all from Delta, Utah. Dave Tatsuno is an emeritus member of the Board.