A Journey Toward More Tourism Cash

Officials Say Heritage Area Is Paying Off

By Sandhya Somashekhar (Contact)

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The organization that promotes the national heritage tour called A Journey Through Hallowed Ground says that when it comes to the 175-mile swath of parks and historic landmarks stretching from Gettysburg past Monticello, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Promoting the tour under one banner, it says, has given a boost to the economy.

A study by the National Park Service found that the 10 parks encompassed by the heritage area — which includes stretches of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — attracted 7 million visitors in 2007 and pumped $247 million into the economy, according to the nonprofit group that promotes the corridor.

It is unclear how much the Journey Through Hallowed Ground designation contributed to that sum, although a study to quantify the impact of grouping the dozens of sites under a single moniker is planned. But officials with the public-private partnership that promotes the tourism area say they think their efforts have helped boost the number of visitors to such places as Manassas Battlefield and Antietam National Military Park.

"Tourism is the number one industry along this four-state corridor," said Cate Magennis Wyatt, president of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership. "Visitation to every one of those parks was trending downward until we created and branded the region."

The heritage area roughly follows the Old Carolina Road, which now goes by the less mellifluous name of Route 15, extending through parts of Loudoun and Prince William counties in Virginia and Frederick County in Maryland.

History and preservation advocates gave the area its name because of its deep significance in Civil War, Revolutionary War, presidential, African American and Native American history. History and tourism officials have been calling it the Journey Through Hallowed Ground for years; in May, President George W. Bush signed a law that officially named it a National Heritage Area, making it eligible for special funding and grants.

The area includes eight presidential homes (of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Taylor, Theodore Roosevelt, Hoover, Eisenhower and Kennedy) and Camp David. Officials say it has the largest collection of Civil War sites in the country, from the Monocacy National Battlefield — where Union troops staved off an attempt by the Confederate army to capture the District — to Harpers Ferry in West Virginia.

Tourism officials along the Journey say a benefit of promoting the sites en masse is that it improves the visibility of some lesser-known destinations, such as the remains of some Hessian barracks, built during the French and Indian War, on the Frederick campus of the Maryland School for the Deaf.

In addition, visitors lengthen their stays rather than making day trips to one or two of the sites, said Cheryl Kilday, president of the Loudoun Convention and Visitors Association.

"It makes it a multi-day experience," she said. "One of our goals is to get people to stay longer and spend more money, which they will if they know it's not something they can just zip through."

Tagged: history, Northern Virginia, parks, tourism

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