TEXAS'S HERITAGE TRAILS BOOST TOURISM

In 1997, the Texas Legislature mandated that the Texas Historical Commission (THC) start promoting heritage tourism in the state. Long on ideas but short on dollars, the THC began developing its Texas Heritage Trails Program.

The THC's successful Texas Main Street Program, which has revitalized more than 125 Texas cities and urban areas, was chosen as a model for the program after numerous discussions and input from consultants. While the Main Street Program revitalizes downtown areas, the Texas Heritage Trails Program provides regional economic revitalization.

The THC also decided to use the signage designating cultural and historic sites put in place across the state by the Texas Department of Transportation in the 1960s. The Texas Travel Trails program targeted rural areas and encouraged Texans to discover what treasures lay in their own backyard.

The Texas Historical Commission's Heritage Trails Program uses trails as a focus for regional economic revitalization in predominately rural areas.

The THC chose the Texas Forts Trail Region in West Texas for its pilot project. It is primarily a rural area traditionally dependent on oil, farming and ranching. However, eight frontier forts and plenty of West Texas charm and hospitality made it a good pilot for the new economic development initiative.

Choosing the pilot area was the easy part. The difficult part was discovering what heritage, cultural and natural resources lay along the Texas Forts Trail and the region surrounding it. The THC accomplished this by assembling an interdisciplinary group of professionals who spent several weeks in the field assessing the region's cultural resources. Eventually, an interdisciplinary evaluation was published and distributed to all of the evaluated sites.

The ruins of Fort Griffin are among the historic attractions found on the Texas Forts Trail.

Concurrently, THC staff were busy raising the local and statewide awareness of the program. They realized how essential it was to create an infrastructure that ensured the sustainability of the program. The commission also worked to assemble a board made of disparate voices from all sectors of the tourism and preservation communities -- motel owners, ranch owners, preservationists, museum curators and others. The Texas Heritage Trails Program then provided the board with $50,000 each year for three years to hire a regional coordinator responsible for managing the board and for creating awareness of the program and the region as a travel destination.

In addition, the THC recognized the need to concurrently market the region as a travel destination. The agency produced 250,000 brochures and distributed them statewide. Numerous stories appeared in newspapers and national travel publications as diverse as the Philadelphia Inquirer, Southern Living, Texas Highways and Canadian Traveler. Since its inception, hundreds of articles have appeared nationally and internationally.

The program has been a success from the start. In the first year, visitation to monitored sites increased by nearly 19 percent. Since then, the region has continued to see an increase in visitation over the baseline year.

Thanks in part to this success, the Texas Department of Transportation awarded the historical commission $4.1 million in Transportation Enhancement Act funds in early 2002. The money will help THC expand the technical, educational and financial assistance it currently provides to promote and enhance cultural and heritage tourism attractions in 92 counties across the state. Overall, the program highlights 10 heritage trail regions -- and through a new partnership with Frost Bank, one of these trails will be featured every other month in Texas Monthly magazine for the next two years.

Heritage travelers, those who visit historic sites and communities, make a particularly strong contribution to the economic vitality of the state, spending an average of $29 more per day than nonheritage travelers and $1.43 billion annually. Heritage travelers create more than 32,000 jobs for Texans every year. For every $1 million dollars expended by Texas heritage travelers, 22 jobs are created and the Gross State Product increases by $825,000.

For more information, contact Janie Headrick, heritage tourism program director, 512-463-5754; or Wendy Papasan, senior communications specialist, 512-475-1576.

[Article courtesy of Wendy Papasan, Texas Historical Commission.]