Regardless of the rules of the community your daughter should be allowed to go to the community uncovered. She should not have to bend to their rules. (In an ideal world at least. But she should do whatever is safest for her and what she is comfortable with.)
Also, regardless of the pure intentions your daughter and her team has, the community will be highly suspect and will still probably act accordingly.
That’s not true in many cases. There can be real winners and losers from historic district designations (and the accompanying restrictions on development and zoning), and they are often quite controversial. I think that’s especially true if there’s a subculture that feels the area is its turf. It may view the designation as outsiders telling it what to do. Or in some cases, if the subculture has initiated the designation, property owners who are not part of the subculture may see the designation as the subculture telling them what to do.
A related example: A few weeks ago, the person who sometimes walks my dog was texting me in a panic. In a remote, largely “wild” part of a large urban park that goes through our neighborhood, where she (and I and many others) walk our dogs without leashes, she ran into a surveying team working for the “Friends of the Park” nonprofit. What could be wrong with that? The nonprofit leadership is extremely anti-dog, and tends to claim exclusive authority to speak for public park users. It has maintained a low-grade war on dogs in the park for years. The surveyors were apparently trying to document damage caused by dogs . . . .
Actually, in this case it is true. This specific work has nothing to do with designations, which was communicated to the residents in writing by the state.
@JHS, so she screamed at them and tried to steal their equipment?
I didn’t think so.
BTW, you have my sympathy on the off-leash area front. Around here, there are always people who are afraid of dogs or don’t like them who are trying to impose unneeded generalized restrictions on areas where 80% of the actual users are dog walkers.