News

Unlocking the past

Heritage tourism takes hold as more and more people decide learning is better than lazing on their vacations.

By ROBERT N. JENKINS
Published March 27, 2005

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[Eastern State Penitentiary]

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT: A food cart rests in a corridor of cells in Eastern State Penitentiary, where prisoners were kept isolated from each other. A prison for more than 140 years, it is now a popular tourist attraction, complete with an audio tour narrated by actor Steve Buscemi.

	[Getty Images]
	FIGHTING FOR RIGHTS: Seated behind a statue of Rosa Parks, Aja Robertson, 7, peers out the window of a bus parked at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. The museum is in the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
	[Photo: Richard Grant]
	ROAD TO VICTORY: Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant rode along this lane shortly after 1 p.m. April 9, 1865, to accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia from Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The past is all around us.

Sometimes, it presses tightly - as in the dank, dim corridors passing cell after cell in the abandoned prison that looms over a Philadelphia suburb.

Sometimes it seems incomprehensible - in the sun-dappled thickets in southern Tennessee, where the blood of tens of thousands of wounded soldiers has long since been washed through the earth.

Sometimes the reproduced props are formally positioned - in the high-ceilinged room where a woman in a crisp uniform swings an arm this way and that as she calls out the names of those who once sat at these desks: "You, Mr. Franklin of Pennsylvania, and you, Mr. Jefferson of Virginia. . . ."

Sometimes the props are actual artifacts that are almost too personal - the filled ashtrays, rumpled bedspread and room-service tray in a second-story motel room in Memphis, frozen in a hate-filled moment of 1968.

Countless thousands of similar presentations, indoors and out, are the basis of heritage tourism, a booming trend in vacation travel.

Though the emphasis is on historically important sites, heritage tourism also encompasses the museums that recollect our ancestors' everyday lives and traditions, cultural festivals, and the reclamation of old neighborhoods long in decline.

Thus, heritage tourism is the antithesis of theme parks, lazing on the beach, casinos, cruise ships, cycling trips, camping or kayaking.

Indeed, instead of getting away from it all, heritage tourism is about reaching back, to savor it all.

"Heritage, or cultural, tourism, is the fastest-growing segment (of travel) all over the continent," says Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

A survey conducted in 2003 for Smithsonian Magazine found that 81 percent of American adults who had traveled in the past year - about 118-million people - had gone at least 50 miles from home for historical or cultural activities.

The poll found four in 10 had added time to their trip specifically for a historic or cultural activity. The reasons most often given: These travelers wanted to enrich their lives with new experiences, and trips on which they learned something were more memorable.

A notable 38 percent preferred to visit destinations that have some historical significance. That clearly was the reason that the number of visitors to a little-known area in South Carolina soared in 2000. That was the year of the movie The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson as a romanticized version of the Revolutionary War guerrilla fighter Francis Marion - the Swamp Fox.

Much of the filming was done around Historic Brattonsville, S.C., less than 10 miles southwest of Rock Hill. The area's visitor numbers tripled after the movie came out; consequently, historic sites that had been closed from early December into March, and every Monday, now are open year-round, daily.

History, or hamburgers?

Probably the most numerous history-based sites are those operated by government agencies at battlegrounds, though keeping desirable land vacant is an expensive proposition.

For instance, the structure most people think of as the Alamo is actually just the chapel of a mission founded in San Antonio in the early 1700s. It was around this building that the Texas colonists withstood Mexican troops for 13 days, until being overrun.

Most of the fighting took place dozens of yards from the chapel, where the fortified mission's outer walls once stood.

The walls are long gone. Now, a few yards from where Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett and more than 180 other defenders fought, you can order a Fuddruckers hamburger, get a scoop of Haagen-Dazs or have a drink at the Howl at the Moon bar.

Instead of looking at the walls against which the Mexican troops leaned ladders, you can marvel at displays inside the Guinness World Records Museum, or shiver inside Ripley's Haunted Adventure.

According to one guide, Mexican Gen. Santa Anna watched the battle from what is now a car-repair shop.

What happened in San Antonio was fairly common: Once that settlement began to grow into a city, no one with money or clout thought enough of the epic battle to preserve all the Alamo's land and buildings.

But things from the past don't have to have the drama of an epic battle to make them interesting. "We try to convince every community that it has something special worth saving," said Moe, of the National Trust.

That's why the National Register of Historic Places has, since its establishment in 1966, listed about 78,000 properties that total more than 1.2-million buildings, districts, structures and objects. Register sites range from underwater shipwrecks to classic, Depression-era diners.

And earlier this month the National Trust issued its sixth annual list of a "Dozen Distinctive Destinations," defined as "unique and lovingly preserved communities."

This year's list includes Key West ("architecture lovers gravitate to the island's . . . proudly preserved Spanish-Colonial mansions and tin-roofed conch houses," the Trust's announcement said) and Oak Park, Ill. ("quaint Victorian cottages and the world's largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings and houses").

"As we live in an increasingly plastic world," said Moe, "people like what is genuine about the past, whether it is an entire small town or a house converted to a museum."

Or an entire district of abandoned warehouses.

"People love old neighborhoods, as downtowns get restored," noted Moe. "A great example is that part of Denver called Lower Downtown - now just LoDo."

What began as that city's first microbrewery - established by a laid-off petroleum engineer who was recently elected mayor of Denver - the vacant warehouse district blossomed into a series of themed nightclubs and restaurants with varying cuisines.

"It has become the most vital, the most popular, part of the downtown," added Moe.

In addition to battlefields and historic neighborhoods, the best-known heritage destinations are living history sites such as Colonial Williamsburg and the nearby Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, Greenfield Village in Michigan, and the Agrirama, near Tifton, Ga.

In Florida, there is Heritage Village in Largo, the Pioneer Settlement for the Creative Arts, about 15 miles west of Daytona Beach, and of course the oldest city in the United States, St. Augustine.

These nonprofit sites include authentic or carefully reproduced structures from centuries ago. Costumed interpreters demonstrate such old-time trade and home skills as spinning yarn, candle dipping, weaving, blacksmithing, carpentry and caring for farm animals.

The Seminole Indian tribes maintain their own heritage displays on their reservations in Florida, as do the Cherokee Indians at their reservation's popular Oconaluftee Indian Village and the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, about 50 miles west of Asheville, N.C.

From backroads to downloads

State tourism offices - particularly those in the original colonies - promote their heritage in innovative ways. Consider these efforts just in the Southeast:

* Maryland has converted the typical highway map into a nicely illustrated display that traces 31 scenic byways. These have themes such as the route of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, a Beach to Bay Indian Trail, the Underground Railroad, Religious Freedom Tour and the Coal Heritage Tour.

The Historic National Road follows America's first national highway, which ultimately reached from Baltimore to the banks of the Mississippi, at St. Louis.

Maryland also has produced four handsome guides on various Civil War battles and the routes taken by the troops. These full-color pamphlets have maps, photos, period drawings and excellent history lessons, including life on the home front during the war.

There is a similar Star-Spangled Banner Trail pamphlet, detailing the parts of the War of 1812 around the Chesapeake Bay.

Before the creation of the trail maps, "You could not readily find those stories, and we wanted to make them come alive," said Marci Ross, resource development manager of the Maryland Office of Tourism Development.

"We knew we could provide (visitors) more-enjoyable experiences and better educate them by directing them onto the back roads and into the hamlets where the armies actually marched.

"We know our broadest audience is interested in things that set Maryland apart. And the battlefields are our icons."

Thus, historians were solicited to provide the text and sometimes the illustrations for the four Civil War and the Star-Spangled Banner brochures. Since the first brochure was offered in mid 2002, about a half-million of the brochures have been mailed out, and 300 are downloaded from the state Web site every week.

n Reacting to the current generation's craze for video games and online entertainment, Virginia officials this year unveiled an innovative historical-tourism promotion. "Stories of a Nation/Surviving Jamestown" is an interactive test of your skills at facing the hardships for the English colonists who landed on the James River in 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock. See www.jamestown1607.org

Professional narration and sound effects heighten the suspense as challenges based on real problems are posed to the viewer. Making too many wrong decisions means the viewer won't survive the hardships or can't lead the other settlers through the harsh conditions the poorly trained colonists faced.

* The trails comprising the South Carolina National Heritage Corridor are described in 11 brochures. Themes include the crops that defined the state, tobacco and cotton. There is also a Gullah-Geechie heritage area, centered on those barrier islands where descendants of former slaves keep alive their particular language and ethnic history.

The state's 2001 survey reported more than 4-million tourists visited heritage sites - museums, cultural events, festivals and historic sites. Almost 80 percent were out-of-state visitors.

* A series of battles in the 1860s forever marked Georgia's place in the minds of military history buffs - and inspired one of the epic American novels, Gone With The Wind.

Battlefields, cemeteries, buildings used as headquarters or field hospitals, even a famous locomotive briefly stolen by Northern infiltrators, are all marked on just one of the half-dozen Civil War trails outlined by Georgia tourism historians.

For devotees of GWTW, you can still enter the three-room apartment in downtown Atlanta and see the typewriter on which Margaret Mitchell composed the novel.

Where history was made

In the same city, the boyhood home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the nearby Ebenezer Baptist Church in which he and his father preached are now open to the public.

And where Dr. King was murdered has been turned into a fascinating, emotionally moving look at a seminal period in the 20th century.

The National Civil Rights Museum is in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Here, the visitor moves through a discussion of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark case in which the Supreme Court in 1954 ruled the segregation theory of "separate but equal" public school systems was unconstitutional.

The next displays include films and recordings of participants in events such as the integration of Little Rock Central High School, the epic March on Washington and sit-ins.

The Montgomery, Ala., bus-riding boycott of 1955 comes to life when visitors board an actual bus from that time and are assailed by recorded voices.

But the most wrenching moment is at the end of the tour - the actual room at the former motel where King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

The Lorraine Motel was in a decaying section of downtown Memphis, a city that King - the foremost symbol of the struggle for equal rights - was visiting in support of striking sanitation workers.

The night before, King had given an emotional address to those gathered in a Memphis church. After reminding the assembly of all that blacks had been through seeking equal rights, he dismissed threats against himself, saying:

"I've been to the mountaintop. . . . I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. . . . I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. . . ."

The next afternoon, King met with aides in adjoining rooms on the motel's second floor. They ordered room service so that they could continue their discussions. Before he was due to make another public appearance, King stepped out onto a walkway about 6 p.m.

From a rooming house across the street, James Earl Ray fired a single rifle shot, killing King instantly. A news photographer waiting for King captured a famous image of his aides, standing by King's body, pointing toward the rooming house.

To look through that motel doorway is to realize that leaders, though mighty, are like the rest of us: King and his aides had to eat, and here are their room-service trays; they had to rest, and a bedspread has been pulled away from the pillows. The simple comforts of this room were the last things King knew in life.

Equally grim to consider, though many times larger, is the Eastern State Penitentiary. When it opened in 1829, about 11/2 miles from downtown Philadelphia, Eastern State was the most-expensive building in the young nation: It had cost $780,000 to build 256 cells surrounded by castlelike walls - the better to frighten new immigrants to America.

The state stopped using it as prison in 1971; by then it had expanded to 980 cells and the former farmland around it was a densely packed, low-income neighborhood.

Eastern State was opened as a museum in the early 1990s, and visitors can listen to actor Steve Buscemi on a taped guide explain that under the original plan, this was the world's first solitary-confinement prison:

Each prisoner was kept by himself in a small cell 23 hours a day; he would get a half-hour in the morning and again in the early evening to enter a tiny, walled back yard. The only visitors allowed were clergy; the prisoner saw no other convicts and seldom even saw his guards.

The theory was to so intimidate the prisoner that he would become penitent and, once released, would follow the straight and narrow. No records were kept to document whether this was successful.

As visitors walk through the poorly lit, dank, crumbling corridors, they hear Buscemi, as well as former guards and prisoners, discuss life inside. Celebrity prisoners of the 20th century included famed bank robber Willie Sutton and mobster Al Capone. The story is told that Capone was apparently convicted on a phony charge of carrying a concealed weapon - a sentence he may have actually arranged to protect himself from competitors. Unlike all the other cells, his is rather spacious and comfortably furnished.

Only a few miles away, close to Philadelphia's waterfront, is the graceful, red brick building Americans now call Independence Hall, but which originally held the Pennsylvania colony's chief governmental offices.

Visitors watch a brief film and then are led by a Park Service ranger into the spacious room in which the great names of the Revolution sat in May 1775 as delegates to the Second Continental Congress. About half of these wealthy, educated men had been trained as lawyers, and they eagerly debated what to do about the onerous taxes levied by Parliament on the colonists' sugar, tea and other goods.

Their original petition to Parliament was rebuffed. King George and his nobles weren't used to being told by his subjects how they wanted to be treated. So the delegates directed a small group, including John Adams, James Madison and Ben Franklin, to draft what became the Declaration of Independence. The actual composition was assigned to the brilliant Thomas Jefferson, then just 33.

The Park Service rangers make this drama come alive, pointing to the desk where each famous figure sat.

The new nation's first rules for self-government, the Articles of Confederation, failed. So delegates from 12 of the 13 states - all but Rhode Island - returned to this same room and again debated, from May to September 1787. Presiding was George Washington.

The document produced this time was the Constitution.

But even the noble and innovative ideas of representative democracy could not unite the scattered peoples of the United States. Agrarian vs. industrial, strong centrist government vs. states' rights, slave-owner vs. abolitionist, they finally began killing each other in the bloodiest war America has ever fought.

The Civil War had begun April 12, 1861, when shots were fired on the federal Fort Sumter, in Charleston's harbor. It was 360 days later, near Tennessee's border with Mississippi, that the two sides were to fight a one-day battle considered one of the three bloodiest confrontations of the war.

It took place at a location so isolated it was identified only by the name of a nearby church: Shiloh.

Early on April 6, Southern troops commanded by Gen. Albert S. Johnston surprised the forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. The two sides numbered about 109,000 men.

The Confederates forced retreat after retreat, until a Union general had his men settle in a dirt road that was sunken below the surrounding ground and thus provided some cover.

Rifle fire was so constant the area was dubbed the Hornet's Nest. The Union held the road until the Confederates fired 62 cannon at the position. Those Northern soldiers finally surrendered. But that night, Grant's reinforcements arrived, forcing the Confederates to retreat on April 7.

The toll from one day's fighting: Nearly 24,000 dead, wounded or missing.

Visitors to what is now the bucolic Shiloh National Military Park learn that the word Shiloh is Hebrew, for place of peace.

- Robert N. Jenkins can be reached at 727 893-8496 or jenkins@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 25, 2005, 13:02:22]