As a fan of historical tourism, I’ve drug the family along on many a trip to Civil War battlefields, presidential birth sites, etc. It always strikes me as odd that for the people who live nearby, what I’ve travelled hundreds of miles to see is just part of their daily life.
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I’ve been to Antietam looking at the bloody lane while a farmer was working in a field.[/ul]
[ul]I met a lady from southern Indiana who splits her time between working for NPS at Lincoln’s boyhood home and being a docent at a local museum.[/ul]
[ul]I’ve done driving tours of Civil War battle sites that had me driving around in bank parking lots and in front of bowling alleys.[/ul]
[ul]I’ve met a guy near Chickamauga who cursed the “damned kids” for partying where so many lost their lives.
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For any dopers who live near historical areas, how does it influence your life? Do you hate to see the area developed, or do you think it’s good for the community? Do you like the tourism it generates, or do you find it annoying?
I’d like to hear your answers to these questions, or anything else you might like to add.
I got lost once and pulled over to check my GPS. Realized I’d pulled over at the “Paul Revere was captured here” site. It struck me as odd. It also felt odd to look over a gorgeous field on a bright, green, summer day and realize that it was the location of a terrible Revolutionary War battle.
It doesn’t affect me much now, but when I first moved up here, I kept going “WHOA! Look at THAT!” because I’m a geek about history stuff. “LOOK! Louisa May Alcott’s house!” “WALDEN POND! Right by the side of the road!”
Not the Civil War, but I lived about a 10 minute walk from the “tourist zone” in Prague for about 8 years. It just seemed normal I guess… we almost never went downtown in Prague as it is overpriced and geared for tourism.
I grew up around Revolutionary War sites near Boston, and I run and bike past all sorts of them now. Frankly, I just get annoyed at the tourists getting in my way these days.
Richmond’s nickname is “History City”. Personally, I could take or leave it. I like reading about history, but I don’t like when people revere it. I’m fine with leaving the architecture alone. Old buildings with interesting stories rock. But gimme a break over stuff like this. I pass by these jokers waving their flag all the time on my walks, and I just want to scream “YA’LL LOST! GET OVER IT!” at the top of my lungs.
Living in and around DC, it’s wall-to-wall monuments and historic landmarks and sites. Seriously, they’re just part of the landscape; even really large, really prominent ones like the Capitol and the Washington Monument you kind of stop being impressed with fairly quickly. They’re impossible not to notice of course, and quite spectacular when you take the time to stop and really take a look, but when driving around, say, the Tidal Basin is part of your daily routine, you don’t really even think about it.
I’m about 2 miles away from the former site of Fort DuQuesne which was replaced by some British thing or other. I also grew up much closer to the Wyoming Valley monument and lived near other sites around that area. Except for the biggies (CW battlefields, Old Fort Niagara, places like that) I don’t think many of those places get much in the way of visitors.
I’ve done some things with Colonial Williamsburg and gotten to know some of their residents; including a couple who don’t work for the place at all. According to them you get used to it; it becomes just another part of life.
I lived in Northern Virginia for several years and all of the landmarks and battle sites are just … there. Unless you specifically go to visit one, they aren’t anything. California is also loaded with historical markers, every few miles (especially in the Mother Lode area) but they’re fun to pull over to read.
I drive past the first of the California Missions – Mission San Diego de Alcala – pretty much daily. I’ve visited it and taken the tour a dozen times. It’s interesting…but only at a fairly low level. It isn’t thrilling or exciting, just…interesting.
Not far from here is the San Pasqual Battlefield, where a small skirmish was fought, posing Mexico’s best chance to keep San Diego for Mexico. (To be realistic, no chance whatever.) There’s a fun re-enactment every year. That’s good entertainment, and definitely of historical interest. But, again, I drive by it all the time and it doesn’t really leap out.
As Rick Kitchen says, these things are just…there.
Why would what happened on this chunk of land 300 years ago affect how I live?
Maybe I’ll read a monument (at least if it’s short).
I was wandering around the Land’s End area of SF and came across something bizarre.
A piece of a WWII warship was just plopped onto a concrete base and a small plaque erected.
In a place far off the beaten path, and with little or no view.
I do not even remember the name of the ship, and doubt that I could find it again easily.
The old Barbary Coast area is now a historical district, so the original buildings are there. It is actually attractive.
But getting up and going to work, doing the shopping - same as anywhere else (except more expensive).
I grew up in the greater Placerville area, not far from Sutter’s Mill where gold was discovered. My mom is a living history volunteer at the Coloma discover site. Gold Rush history is just part of everyday life in that part of the state.
I work in the Concord MA area. I have many customers that live in or next to historic sites. It’s just part of life. Most aren’t even that annoyed by people gawking at their properties, I’ve found territoral people don’t last long living in named houses and such. If trespassers stress you out I don’t recommend buying a historic home.
I have one customer that lives directly across the street from Walden pond. the state eminent domained most the houses in that area. They fought it for years and won. Runs a bed a breakfast part time. Her only anoyance is the park has limited parking and people try to use her driveway for parking despite giant ‘private property’ ‘no parking signs.’
Another lady owns the original Shaker meeting house for Harvard village. Generally only serious Shaker scholars find there way to that nieghborhood, most are satisfied checking out the Shaker museum on the other side of town (it’s a shaker building moved from that nieghborhood. She opens her house up for people to check it out a once or twice a year. It is a really large and beautiful home.
I’ve seen all the sites in my area s number of times I still like walking through on off seasons or weekdays. I don’t care much for the crowds. I don’t blame people for wanting to see things, I’m lucky I’m able to see sites at my lesure and in a number of cases get history and access others don’t ever learn about or see.
I’ve mostly lived in fairly historical places, and actually it does make a little bit of difference to me. Makes me feel a little bit more connected to the past and the world in general, even though that sounds so new-age it makes me cringe.
I do wonder about the people at Pompeii and Herculaneum who live in run-down flats virtually on top of sites that are among the oldest and most important in the world and, since they’re open to the elements, can be easily seen from the flats’ windows. Must be a bit weird for your view to be a 2,000-year-old bar and roads with 2,000-year-old cart marks. You would get used to it, of course, but you’d probably always know it was a bit different to most people’s views.
I once lived a couple of short blocks from Walt Whitman’s birthplace, in Huntington Station, Long Island. The site contains not only the house Whitman was born in, but the grounds, including other buildings. After visiting it once, I just thought of it as a tranquil oasis, surrounded by a highway, shopping mall, and other symbols of contemporary suburbia. The place never got a lot of visitors, except for an occasional group of school kids. It was just a nice thing to live near.
You get a difference sense of historical scale in different parts of the world. When I first moved from the US to the UK I was amazed that buildings that were so old were still in everyday use. The pub I use predates the US civil war. The building across the road from it is from the time of Columbus ‘discovering’ America. A quote I heard about what distinguishes Brits and Americans - “Americans think 100 years is a long time, Brits thing 100 miles is a long way.”
Living in England, if there was an area with nothing historic, people’d probably come and look at it for the novelty value.
My old village church was over 800 years old, my brother’s school over 500, there’s stone circles dating back thousands of years just dotted in fields, that may have a sign or may just be known to locals really.
History’s everywhere, you think about it sometimes, but generally it’s just how it is.
Yes. When I first moved to the DC area, I had a job in Alexandria. Every morning, I drove down a road from Maryland that came out under the Kennedy Center, went around one side of the Lincoln Memorial, then across the Memorial Bridge with Arlington Cemetery and Robert E Lee’s house straight ahead of me. That was cool for a week or so, then I paid more attention to the traffic than the coolness factor.
Heh. I used to work with someone from Croatia, but I once got it confused with the Czech Republic. She asked me how I could do that and I said, “they’re practically right next to each other.”
“What do you mean? It’s like an eight hour drive.”
Like I said, practically next to each other. I can drive eight hours from San Diego to San Francisco in that time and still not leave the state.
Anyway, I used to live by a couple of the California Missions. We did the tours and stuff because my wife was from Nevada and never heard of them. If we wanted to go for a picnic or something we’d go to the Santa Barbara Missions. Those Spanish sure knew how to pick beautiful places to work Indians to death.
