Heritage Areas: Background, Proposals, and Current Issues
This report focuses on heritage areas designated by Congress and related issues and legislation. Over more than two decades, Congress has established 40 National Heritage Areas (NHAs) to commemorate, conserve, and promote areas that include important natural, scenic, historic, cultural, and recreational resources.
A Study of the Heritage Business Owners and Artisans of the Bear River Heritage Area
Introduction The National Trust for Historic Preservation has defined heritage tourism as “Traveling to experience the places, artifacts and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present. It includes cultural, historic and natural resources” (National Trust for Historic Preservation, n.d.). Heritage tourism is a growing subset of tourism in which the tourist seeks a connection with heritage or culture as these relate to the past. A relatively new approach, the idea of promoting heritage tourism through the creation of heritage areas has been rapidly gaining in popularity over the past several decades. Heritage areas seek to preserve and present the cultural history of the area and how the local landscape has shaped that history (Vincent & Whiteman, 2009). Heritage areas can be thought of as a regional, collaborative effort by area governments, businesses, and community groups to promote and preserve local heritage resources while promoting tourism and creating positive economic opportunities.
Negotiating the cultural and economic outcomes of sport heritage attractions: the case of the National Baseball Hall of Fame
ABSTRACT Contemporary museums must balance their roles as commercial entities and repositories of various, and often dissonant, heritages and histories. Sports museums in particular often have clear commercial and nostalgic aims, particularly through tourist visitation, though the extent to which they represent more challenging narratives remains unclear. This paper examines how one of the most famous sports museums in the world, the National Baseball Hall of Fame (NBHF) in Cooperstown, New York, balances its dual role as tourist attraction and repository of baseball's sometimes checkered past. It was found that different sections of the museum provide greater or lesser degrees of engagement with more controversial issues, although the commercial outputs and appeal of the museum remains clear throughout. Utlimately, the NBHF demonstrates that balancing veneration and critique in collections can be commercially prosperous, and can provide a template for other sport and popular culture museums who may be wary of incorporating more challenging narratives in their exhibits. Furthermore, the symbiotic relationship between the Hall of Fame and the village of Cooperstown, particularly in creating and maintaining cultural and economic outputs, requires further exploration.