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WHAT IS A HERITAGE AREA?
A Powerful Tool
An Innovative Approach
National Heritage Areas
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A Powerful Tool
The power of an integrated regional approach to preserving historic places and telling the story of a way of life has led to the success and growth of heritage areas across the country. Through regional cooperation, communities collectively reap the economic benefit of increased tourism traffic, which serves as a catalyst for overall business growth and development.
At the same time, there is a growing recognition of the value of heritage resources and a greater willingness to protect and preserve them. Heritage areas merge community resources to promote conservation and community and economic development--or heritage development. They harness a wide range of community assets and interests--from historic preservation, outdoor recreation, museums, performing arts, folk life and crafts and scenic and working landscapes, to grassroots community-building activities--that when combined create a sum greater than its parts.
Heritage areas offer a uniquely holistic approach to preservation that seeks to encompass not just the buildings that identify and enrich a place but also the living culture of the people who call the place home. Heritage areas are dynamic regional initiatives that build connections between people, their place, and their history. These connections are strengthened by capturing and telling the stories of the people and their place.
These stories, when linked together, reflect a regional identity and support a collective awareness of the need to protect and enhance what makes our places unique. The most successful heritage areas are much more than tourist destinations. They are the expression of the people who live, work, and shape the land. Their stories are rich and diverse. They provide a bridge connecting the past to the present and people to their environment.
An Innovative Approach
The culture of a community is shaped by the local environment and topography, and the patterns of human activity which define that culture are recorded on the land. Thus, a "cultural landscape" arises, reflecting this ongoing interrelationship between people and the land. Many of our nation's unique cultural landscapes now face irrevocable alteration through development or neglect.
The heritage area concept offers an innovative method for citizens, in partnership with local, state, and Federal government, and nonprofit and private sector interests, to develop a plan and an implementation strategy focused on conserving the special qualities of the local cultural landscape.
Heritage areas can be designated locally, or as part of a State or Federal system of heritage areas. Heritage areas form a cohesive, distinctive landscape arising from patterns of human activity shaped by geography. The heritage area concept is one of the most innovative and effective tools being utilized today to preserve, conserve, and promote heritage resources. Among the original heritage corridors and areas are some of the most successful and inspiring preservation strategies in America today.
Heritage partnerships have been praised as problem solvers, as unifiers, as proof that environmental and economic progress can be consistent. Heritage areas can bring all members of a community out to work together to protect the resources that make their community unique and are special to them.
National Heritage Areas
As noted previously, heritage areas can be designated locally, or as part of a State or Federal system of heritage areas. An entity--whether a specific historical area, or a community, or a group of counties--may choose to promote itself as a heritage area. Or, it may seek to work with the state legislature to be recognized as a state heritage area. Or, the entity may pursue designation as a National Heritage Area.
The National Park Service's definition for a National Heritage Area is as follows: A "National Heritage Area" is a place designated by Congress where natural, cultural, historic and scenic resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally distinctive landscape arising from patterns of human activity shaped by geography. These patterns make National Heritage Areas representative of the national experience through the physical features that remain and the traditions that have evolved in them. Continued use of National Heritage Areas by people whose traditions helped to shape the landscapes enhances their significance. The focus is on the protection and conservation of critical resources--the natural, cultural, scenic, and historic resources that have shaped us as a nation and as communities.
In applying for National Heritage Area status, an entity must demonstrate that is possesses "an assemblage of natural, historic, or cultural resources that together represent distinctive aspects of American heritage worthy of recognition, conservation, interpretation, and continuing use, and are best managed as such an assemblage through partnerships among public and private entities, and by combining diverse and sometimes noncontiguous resources and active communities." The designation of a National Heritage Area is a recognition of a community's efforts to identify its natural and cultural resources which define its sense of place, and its stories. Designation recognizes nationally distinctive landscapes, and the role of these distinctive landscapes in defining the collective American cultural landscape.
Designation as a National Heritage Area also provides important recognition of local community-based efforts to preserve this distinctive character. Although there are over 200 heritage areas across the country, there are only 24 Congressionally-designated heritage areas in the United States today. The first heritage area was established over 20 years ago in Western Pennsylvania, and each area has been funded at varying levels.
With increased interest in the development of heritage areas, the process is receiving greater scrutiny, and, in the future, funding will likely be set at $1 million per year (with a required 50/50 state and local annual match) capped at $10 million over ten years. However, it is too early in the planning process to determine whether or not the Mississippi Hills Heritage Area should pursue designation as a national heritage area. This is a decision that will be made after much additional consideration and after the advantages and disadvantages have been fully weighed.
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