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The hot issue here in Chaffee County at the moment
concerns branding,
and not the kind associated with
ranching. Nor are there any accusations concerning branding
and the treatment of prisoners at our new county jail --
one Taser jolt seems to be the extent of that scandal.
Instead, the controversy is about marketing so that the
county can attract more tourists.
For twenty-plus years we had a marketing slogan: Now
THIS is Colorado.
I don't know why other people liked
it, but it seemed apt to me, because most of the things I
like about Colorado -- mountains, mines, railroad remnants,
ranches, backwater towns, unpretentious saloons and
belly-filling greasy spoons -- could be found in Chaffee
County.
My tastes may not fit in the modern mainstream, though,
because last year the Chaffee County Visitors Bureau hired
a consultant who produced a new slogan, Headwaters of
Adventure,
which is supposed to take effect this
year.
A lot of people don't like it because, they say, it focuses on only one tourism activity here, whitewater rafting, when the county has much more to offer. Further, the upper Arkansas River is already near its capacity for floaters, so what's the point of promoting more raft trips?
Also, rafting is seasonal -- usually about 75 summer
days -- when we have plenty of tourists. If we're going to
go to the expense and trouble of marketing, then why not
promote year-round activities? After the criticism erupted,
our Visitors Bureau announced plans to tout art
adventures
and cultural adventures,
but the key
word here is adventures.
I have read several scholarly examinations of the
tourism industry, and they all say that the kind of
branding you do -- that is, how you define your area --
determines the kinds of tourists you get.
Outdoor-recreation tourism isn't the only kind; there are
cultural tourists
who might come to see a play or
view the art galleries, and there are heritage
tourists
who are interested in historic places.
Colorado Preservation Inc. held its annual convention in Denver last week, and there was talk of promoting heritage tourism in some eastern Plains counties. Amy Webb, director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's heritage tourism program, said heritage tourists are a good catch, since they spend an average of $623 apiece per trip, while the overall traveler average is $457.
As a history buff, I suppose I qualify as a heritage
tourist
when I'm on the road, since I frequently visit
small-town museums and look for places where historic
events occurred, after I've examined any old railroad
beds.
But the process does raise some questions, which occurred to me a when I happened upon a History Channel program about an American battleship, the U.S.S. Missouri.
There was some old newsreel footage of the ship in Tokyo harbor in September of 1945, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur stood on the deck to receive the formal surrender from Japanese officials.
I've been there, and stood in that very place,
I
thought, recalling a trip in 1970 when we had toured the
Missouri, which was then mothballed alongside dozens of
other old warships in Bremerton, Wash.
Then I had second thoughts. The ship had been in Tokyo Bay, not Puget Sound, when the historic event occurred, so had I really stood in the same place?
That brought to mind another I've stood there
moment.
About 15 years ago, I had the good fortune to
get a personal tour of the Tabor Opera House in Leadville
from its owner, Evelyn Furman. Walking across the stage, I
recalled that Oscar Wilde, Eddie Foy and Houdini, plus
Horace Tabor himself, had all stood in that very place.
Or had they? The floorboards of the stage might well have been replaced since the opera house was built in 1879, so the actual place where they stepped might have been converted into firewood years ago.
Most definitions of heritage tourism include the word
authentic,
and yet, it's difficult to know what's
authentic. Bent's Fort, for instance, was meticulously
re-created by the National Park Service 30 years ago, more
than a century after the original adobe structure melted
back into the prairie.
So it's a modern reconstruction. But if the original had
been maintained over the years, it would have been
remodeled and repaired with new material that replaced the
original, so would that be any more authentic
than
the modern reconstruction?
But at least these questions lead to some thought, which
is more than you can say for certain other forms of
tourism. So I wish our boosters and promoters had given
year-round heritage tourism
more consideration,
instead of promoting this as just another place to get a
dose of adrenaline.
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