Historians and the Opportunities of National Heritage Areas

Carroll Van West

A Civil War reenactor at the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area, a partnership with Middle Tennessee State University’s Center for Historic Preservation, and the National Park Service.

National Heritage Areas are a significant development in the United States’s national parks system. Since 1984, Congress has created forty-nine National Heritage Areas, stretching from the Essex National Heritage Area in Massachusetts to the newly designated Kenai Mountain-Turnagain Arm National Heritage Area in Alaska. What separates heritage areas from the National Park Service’s dizzying array of propertiessuch as its national parks, national historic sites, and national recreation areasis that heritage areas rarely own or manage property. The federal government does not acquire land or impose land use controls. Rather, National Heritage Areas provide expertise and funding to local and state partners to achieve mutual goals in interpretation, education, preservation, recreation, and economic development that address nationally significant resources and/or historic themes.

In the first ten years of the federal program, Congress typically designated historic transportation corridors. Among the first designated, and now most firmly established, heritage areas are: Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor, Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, Path of Progress National Heritage Tour Route, the Quinebaugh and Shetucket Rivers Valley National Heritage Corridor, and the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor. These initiatives largely reflected preservation planning, resource conservation, and economic development concerns on how to revitalize older industrial corridors.

Then, in 1996, Congress approved nine new designations, half of which continued the focus on corridors: South Carolina National Heritage Corridor, Ohio and Erie National Heritage Canalway, Augusta Canal National Heritage Area, Cache La Poudre River Corridor, and the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area. The other half, however, reflected the influence of local activists who pushed for a different approach to designate large regions united by shared heritage and connected historic patterns. The Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area focused on the folkways, industrial history, and labor history of the greater Pittsburgh region. Silo and Smokestacks National Heritage Area looked at the interplay of agriculture and industry in northeast Iowa. Cane River National Heritage Area also focused on connections and interplay, this time between Louisiana’s Creole and African American cultures. The largest heritage area was the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area, where citizens, historians, and officials insisted on state boundaries to define a program to better protect, interpret, and enhance resources and stories from the war through Reconstruction.

Since 1996, Congress has continued to follow the concepts of corridors and areas in its designations. But it has increasingly created large areas that reflect historic themes and patterns: aviation history in Dayton, Ohio; automobile industry in Michigan, the American Revolution in New Jersey, Abraham Lincoln in Illinois, and the Mormon pioneer experience in Utah. Four recent efforts--Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area, the Great Basin Natural Heritage Route, and the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor--even linked resources and stories from multiple states into a single theme-centered heritage area.

Since community-derived goals shape each project, best practices in historical interpretation within National Heritage Areas vary significantly. Some areas are basically conservation/preservation efforts while others are heritage tourism programs. In both cases, interpretation and education programs, exist but they play a more secondary role in determining funding priorities and the amount of staff assistance. Another influence on the role of history in the heritage area is the dependency of National Heritage Areas on local and state partnerships. Unlike National Park Service units that receive most of their budget from federal appropriations, heritage areas are far less dependent on federal dollars and far more dependent on local support. The dependence on local support can generate a consensus, noncontroversial approach to local history. Where historical societies, museums, and universities are engaged partners, it is a different story. Heritage areas may rely on their professional expertise and the skills of their partners to carry out field projects, research, exhibit development, and public programming. Where these same partners are missing, it is no surprise that most attention goes to marketing and development, leaving the education and interpretation projects underfunded and often lacking in scholarly credibility.

Historians have many opportunities to contribute to National Heritage Areas. Only a handful of heritage areas are chronologically limited (like Tennessee, to the Civil War and Reconstruction period) and require specialists. Most need scholars who can treat the full range of American history and also have some acquaintance with the deeper past or at least have an ability to understand and work with archaeological resources. They also need an ability to work not only with “traditional” primary sources but “non-traditional” ones as well, including the arts, architecture, material culture, and cultural landscapes. It is impossible to be fully trained in all of these disciplinary tools, but you can gain the ability to ask appropriate questions and be able to help communities and groups to work through the difference between the heritage and the history of a place. As an example, take the new Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, where audiences for an authentic versus an imagined past will undoubtedly collide. That project will need historians well-versed in the region, the arts, history, and African American culture.

At first glance, public historians seem to be the best match for heritage areas. But folklorists and anthropologists have been key contributors--a Ph.D. anthropologist, Nancy Morgan, headed the Cane River National Heritage Area in its formative years. Historians adept at working with local history resources and skilled in oral history techniques also have found value in working with heritage areas.

And the scholarly contribution is a must if a heritage area wishes to be successful. By their nature, heritage areas create access to community resources that are often closed to scholars and other “outsiders.” This evidence will only be fully mined, however, if the right questions are answered. Otherwise, it is too easy for communities to mouth the stereotypes of American history that they assume everyone wants to hear.

Historians have had opportunities to provide leadership to the heritage area movement. The Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area was the first to be administered by a university department, in this case the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University. The center proved a logical choice because its faculty and staff already served as the editors of the Tennessee Historical Quarterly and the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, and its statewide programs of documenting historic family farms and historic African American churches provided an invaluable network for exploring issues of occupation, home front, and emancipation in Civil War Tennessee. The result has been a community-centered, scholarly facilitated program looking beyond battlefields to experiences that defined people and places from 1860 to 1875. The program has brought a wide range of scholars, including David Blight, Barbara Fields, Charles Dew, Steven Ash, Earl Hess, and Eric Foner, to public programs. It also has provided subvention grants for new research, such as Ben Severance’s study of the Tennessee State Guard.

Other heritage areas have established close ties with historians. Cane River National Heritage Area in Louisiana turned to southern historian C. Brendan Martin to produce its interpretive plan. Cane River also maintains a close working relationship with multiple departments at Northwestern State University in Louisiana. The Schuylkill River National Heritage Area, following in part the Tennessee model, operates in partnership with the Montgomery County Community College. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is playing a major role in the development of the newly designated Lincoln National Heritage Area.

For public historians and scholars who wish to take their research and classes into historic settings, National Heritage Areas are potentially valuable avenues to explore. With justification, historians have long decried the incomplete history, out of step with prevailing scholarly research and interpretation, which they encounter at local and state parks and museums. The same criticism may be launched at heritage areas, but this federal program also offers opportunities for engagement between universities and communities that potentially gives historians a way to bring new questions, sources, and understandings to large public audiences. These new, dynamic units of the National Park Service want partners of all types--the academic community can answer that call and enter into the reciprocal partnerships that are National Heritage Areas.

Carroll Van West is director of the Center for Historical Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfressboro, and director of the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area.