This news story originally provided by The Herald-Dispatch

March 15, 2005

Commission promotes region to world with map of sites for visitors

By RAJU CHEBIUM - The Herald-Dispatch

WASHINGTON -- People grinding corn by hand and stitching quilts are among the sights visitors can take in at the Heritage Farm Museum & Village in Huntington, W.Va.

They also can see farm animals such as cows, donkeys and roosters, walk through a re-created village from 1850s Appalachia and stay in one of the four bed-and-breakfasts on the 500-acre property.

The Appalachian Regional Commission, or ARC, is promoting the farm museum and 355 other Appalachian sites to a worldwide audience.

The agency paid the National Geographic Society $180,000 to create the map and a Web site listing 356 sites of historic, cultural or natural interest. The map goes online soon and will be inserted in the April issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine.

The idea of the map is to introduce tourists to the historic, cultural and natural beauty of the 13-state region, and pump much-needed tourism dollars into one of the nations poorest areas.

The magazine, one of the most popular in the world, gets 5 million to 7 million hits on its Web site each month and is read by about 4 million people, according to Executive Editor Paul Martin.

Heritage Farms co-owner, Henriella Perry, is confident the map will draw visitors from far and wide to her 3-year-old slice of Americana.

"Every kind of business would like to have that kind of shot in the arm," the native West Virginian said. "It feels like a real honor to be in it."

The detailed color map pinpoints sites and includes a short description to whet travelers appetites. The ARC and the National Geographic Society agreed a year ago to produce the map and the Web site.

Martin said the magazine narrowed about 1,000 nominations from local and state officials to 356, which was the most that his graphics staff could fit on the foldout map. He originally wanted to include just 100 sites.

"That was just such a disservice to the area because so many places deserve to be on the map," Martin said.

Two other Cabell County attractions on the map are Blenko Glass and Hillbilly Hot Dogs.

The ARC has long encouraged struggling mountain communities to showcase their tourism value to generate revenue.

The $66 million agency, run jointly by the federal government and the 13 Appalachian states, gives grants to local groups and finds matching funds from local and state governments and businesses.

It also gets about $450 million a year to continue building highways through the mountainous terrain so that people and businesses can move there.

The ARC has jurisdiction over 410 counties in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia, Kentucky, the Carolinas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Tennessee and all of West Virginia.

ARCs state co-chairman, Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, said the map is one effort among many to diversify the Appalachian economy.

"Weve done so much now to expand and improve the Appalachian highway system that we have the opportunity, I believe, to capitalize on that investment in the form of an aggressive promotion of tourism," he said.

"All across the Appalachian region states are increasingly turning to tourism as a strategy for economic development," the Republican said. "(The map) really raises the visibility for the opportunities for really interesting cultural and historical tourism in Appalachia. I think its going to be a huge boost."

Because many Appalachian communities have the sort of rustic charm valued by travelers interested in quaint, out-of-the-way destinations, the ARC decided to market the regions rural "asset," said federal co-chairwoman Anne Pope.

"What we are trying to do is focus on the assets, whether its cultural, structural or physical," she said.

Janet Fout, co-director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in Huntington, called the partnership with National Geographic a good investment because it seeks to promote an ecologically friendly business.

"It is unfortunate that we have invested money in extractive industries that destroy the beauty of this state," she said, referring to the coal companies. "If you look at the numbers, tourism is the number one growing industry in the state. This is long overdue."

Mining industry losses hit region hard

Appalachia is the birthplace of U.S. coal mining. Communities flush with mining jobs neglected to attract other industries in the past. So, when mining companies left or replaced workers with machines, the undereducated communities suffered. Some regions of Appalachia, such as the coalfields in West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, have yet to fully recover.

Communities that were home to steel and other manufacturing industries also have taken a hit from increasing globalization and the general decline of U.S. manufacturing over the past few decades.

Attracting other types of business to the region is frequently a problem because many communities are remote and lack good roads and other basic infrastructure like sewer and water connections.

Since 1965, the ARC has been building roads, bringing the high-speed Internet to remote areas and promoting tourism to dispel poverty.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said tourism is booming because of his states Gulf Coast beaches and casino gambling. He wants more tourists to go to the Appalachian region in northern Mississippi, home to the Civil War Interpretive Center in Shiloh, the Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site, and Tupelo, where rock-and-roll legend Elvis Presley was born. All three places are on the National Geographic Society map.

"This is a nice, historic area as well as a pretty area," said Barbour, the former head of the national Republican Party. "Mississippi is the birthplace of American music, from Elvis Presley and rock and roll in Tupelo, to B.B. King (the blues musician), to Jimmy Rogers, the father of country music in Meridian. The Appalachian part of our state is involved in that Mississippian tradition of music."

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, saw a longer-term benefit from the ARCs partnership with the National Geographic Society: enticing travelers captivated by his states natural beauty to move there -- and bring their businesses with them.

The map "will help tremendously," Manchin said. "There is an awful lot we are doing. This is just one more tool."