The long-serving head of the nation's best-known preservation group is retiring.

Richard Moe has been president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation for 17 years and will step down in the spring.

Best known for its annual list of most endangered places, the group has in recent years sought to preserve not just individual buildings but groups of them with historic value, like on New York City's Lower East Side or New Orleans' neighborhoods wrecked after Hurricane Katrina.

Moe, 72, says he is most proud of his role in preventing the Disney Corp. from building a theme park near the historic Civil War battlefield in Manassas, Va., and the preservation of Abraham Lincoln's cottage in Washington, among other efforts.