When I heard there was a new map coming out this week called the
Sonoma County Historic Trail, I wondered what it might be
about.
Would it direct us to old buildings and statues? Identify the
beach where Sir Francis Drake landed? Tell us where to find a
bronze plaque?
Well, yes and no.
“We offer this historic trail as a handy guide to our many
visitor centers and museums,” says the new map, “where you can find
detailed information about the people, places and attractions that
interest you.”
As it turns out “historic trail” is a loose term for any
collection of places related by commonalities that may include
proximity, age, notoriety, or all of the above.
“Cultural heritage tourism,” which means traveling somewhere to
experience a place’s history, art or culture, is emerging as a
“major growth market,” in the view of tourismologists.
It’s a marketing niche of particular interest to aging Baby
Boomers, the post World War II generation whose members are now
arriving at retirement age, are traveling more and have
demonstrated a fondness for looking back.
Traveling Baby Boomers “are looking for history and looking for
genealogy,” said Ben Stone, executive director of the Sonoma County
Economic Development Board, which created the new guide with the
help of people at all the county’s visitors centers, the county
tourism bureau, the Sonoma County Library and the county’s
historical museums.
The map is an effort to let the Boomers know we’ve got plenty
of cultural heritage here. For the record, it may be the first
county-wide historic trail guide in the entire U.S.A., said
Stone.
Our map does have antecedents, such as the city of Boston’s
Freedom Trail, which guides visitors to Boston city landmarks like
Independence Hall and Bunker Hill, “important things in history to
see in Boston,” said Stone
“We thought it would be a good thing to do something like that
around Sonoma County history,” said Stone, “a county-wide trail
that showed the key points in Sonoma County history,” such as the
Spanish presence here, Sir Francis Drake, the Russians who arrived
a couple of hundred years ago at what is now Fort Ross and somehow
survived without tapas bars and tasting rooms.
Working with the historical museums and the county’s 13 visitors
centers “We asked, ‘What’s historic in your area?’” said Stone.
The resulting map is basically a distillation of the historic
resources, because obviously there is too much to get it all in a
single brochure.
There are what seem like some rather glaring omissions, such as
any mention of native American Pomo or Miwok culture, or the West
County Trial that follows the route of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa
Railway, but the mapmakers say this is a work in progress that will
evolve as future maps are published.
“It’s a pilot project,” said Justin Hayashi, the project
co-ordinator at the EDB. “It can’t have it all.”
If it works well, future editions will improve on this
beginning, said Hayashi.
“It’s what’s called a ‘lure brochure’ in the travel industry,”
said Ben Stone.
I thought the map would probably not be intended for me, that
is, for locals, but maybe that all depends on what you want to
discover. Visitors are visitors, and when I dropped into the
Russian River Visitors Center to get a copy of the new map I
discovered a lot of other local trail guides I didn’t know existed,
such as a map of Sonoma County’s historic Sonoma County bridges,
most of them located in the county’s northwestern portion, crossing
the Russian River or its tributaries, all of which could be
considered parts of the Sonoma County Historic Trail.
The new map encourages hiking and walking, and directs visitors
to tourism friendly facilities open seven days a week. It’s
available at all the county’s visitor centers, the tourism bureau,
history museums, and eventually will be downloadable from the
EDB’s Web site.
