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Cultural Heritage Tourism

Heritage tourism is the business and practice of attracting and accommodating visitors to a place or area based especially on the unique or special aspects of that locale’s history, landscape (including trail systems), and culture.

 

Lardner/Klein Landscape Architects (L/KLA) has been helping communities from Connecticut to California in their efforts to preserve, promote, and protect the cultural and natural resources of an area and enhance the travel experience as a means of establishing a nature-based or heritage-based tourism destination

 

We often hear 'we just want to keep our farms, wooded hillsides and small towns just the way they are today.'   But keeping a place 'just the way it is today' requires more hard work than accepting change and business as usual.  Heritage and nature-based tourism help these communities to preserve what is important while sharing their heritage with those that care most about it.  Heritage travelers are interested in history, and experiencing places that are unique, memorable and that cannot be easily replicated.

 

L/KLA has helped communities conserve and enhance the special qualities and develop place-based travel experiences by managing a community or region’s  heritage travel infrastructure – its scenic roads, parkways, greenways, trails and  heritage corridors and touring routes.  Many of these plans focused on leveraging the cultural and heritage resources within a corridor or region, encouraging links and joint marketing efforts between communities and sites to extend the visitor's stay, filling hotel rooms and selling more meals.

Rendering of an interpretive kiosk at the historic Port Tobacco site.

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More than just moving through a community, L/KLA helps communities to share their places and stories—encouraging people to get out of their cars, learn about a community and its stories, linger along its main street, and uncover the hidden beauty and history of an area.  L/KLA helps a community or region organize its stories so that they can be told in an engaging and entertaining way– leaving more to be experienced on the next visit.

OTHER PROJECTS

Management Plans

 

Strategic Plans and Program Assistance

  • Enhancing Bicycling and Walking on Maryland's Byways and Main Streets 

  • Oil Region National Heritage Area Sustainability Plan, Pennsylvania 

  • Utah Scenic Byways Strategic Livability Plan

  • Maryland Scenic Byway Program Strategic Plan, MD SHA

  • New Jersey Scenic Byway Program Strategic Plan, NJDOT

  • Connecticut Scenic Roads Corridor Management Study

  • Federal Highway Administration National Scenic Byways Program

 

Cultural and Historic Landscapes

 

Places

  • Barstow Route 66 Specific Plan, California (underway)

  • Fort Ward Park and Museum Area Management Plan, Alexandria, VA (in progress)

  • Kings Highway Design Guideline, Princeton, NJ (in progress)

  • Master Interpretive Plan Rappahannock Station I and II, Fauquier County, VA

  • Historic Dove Bank ADA Accessible Trail

  • Vienna Town Green, Virginia

  • Hindman/Knott County Community Development Initiative--Using our Heritage to Build Tomorrow's Community, Kentucky

  • Washington Heritage Trail Signage and Wayfinding Plan

  • Chincoteague Waterfront Park

  • Fredericksburg Riverside Park Master Plan, Virginia

  • Fredericksburg Waysides, Virginia

  • Main Street Gettysburg Alumni Park, Pennsylvania

  • Apppomattox River Heritage Trail, Virginia

  • New River Gorge - Nuttleburg Historic Site Preservation and Access

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