All Department of Energy field facilities share a common history in their association with DOE and its predecessor agencies. Energy, science and technology, and nuclear weapons development and production are New Bethel Baptist Church, Oak Ridge National Laboratory among the common themes across the DOE complex that link the sites one to another. Each site, nonetheless, has its own unique history unconnected with either headquarters or the other field sites. Most sites have been Federal facilities for only five or six decades. Prior to Federal control they were home to Euro-American settlers for a few hundred years and to Native Americans for thousands of  years.

The Department of Energy values the history and pre-history at the field sites that antedate its own history. Each site is responsible not only for following all policy and guidance related to cultural resource management but also for preserving and interpreting its unique history. Most large DOE field sites have teams of archaeologists and historians that labor to protect and preserve the site's archaeological and historical heritage.

Much of the archaeological, historical, and preservation work that has been accomplished at the sites is open and/or accessible to the public. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory, for example, has restored the New Bethel Baptist Church, which was taken over by the Federal Government in 1942 in anticipation of the construction nearby of the X-10 Graphite Reactor, and set up an exhibit inside on pre-laboratory life and times. The Richland Operations Office has placed information on Native Americans and settlers online at its Hanford Cultural and Historic Resources Program page. The Savannah River Site's Savannah River Archaeological Research Program, operated by the University of South Carolina's Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, has produced dozens of publications and operates a vigorous outreach program that includes "classroom digs" and a "Digging for Data" Summer Camp.

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