Vote for Your Favorite Heritage and Outdoors Spots on the EP Times Ballot

Once again the El Paso Times is conducting their Reader's Favorites poll. Categories include Home Services, Entertainment, Groceries, Automotive, Eating Out and Financial. (There's also a "General" category for things like best service and best employer.)

Under "Entertainment" there are museums and art galleries and campgrounds among other "places". El Paso County Historical Commission Chairman, Bernie Sargent, recommends that people use the "Museum" spot under "Entertainment" to write in places that get overlooked since they aren't museums. Examples could be the Magoffin Home or Keystone Heritage Park. 

Expanding on Bernie's great idea, some of you might want to vote for your favorite hiking or birding or rock climbing spot by using the "Museum" or "Campground" space on the EP Times ballot.

Bernie Sargent raises a good point. We think about favorites under a narrow set of categories. However, what about our favorite heritage site in El Paso? What about our favorite place to go hiking, bicycling, rock climbing, strolling and/or birding? You can write in Franklin Mountains State Park or a specific spot like the Schaffer Shuffle or the Nature Trail that the El Paso Master Naturalists have worked so diligently on to make attractive. You may want to specify the B-36 crash site or the knife edge on the ridge or even Scenic Drive on Scenic Sunday. Birders also have favorite spots in the upper and lower valleys. 

Heritage and eco/outdoors tourism is big business in other places. Sure wouldn't hurt to tout these places in El Paso. Big dollar opportunity or not - it makes sense to get others interested in our history and our great outdoors.

Go HERE for the poll. Use one of the slots under entertainment to vote for your favorite heritage and outdoors spot.

Thank you, Bernie Sargent!

 

El Paso Can Benefit from Heritage Tourism

El Paso Can Benefit from Heritage Tourism 
by Jackson Polk

Things are changing all over El Paso, including how we market our historic assets.

It's all good, as the saying goes, and it's about to get even better.

Our region's rich and diverse history and heritage can help turn El Paso into a destination city that's world class.

Our history is unique because it is not one story, but many overlapping and interwoven stories, and many of the events that took place here are considered turning points in North American history.

Did you know there are dinosaur tracks near El Paso that were made 100 million years ago?

Have you been to Keystone Heritage Park, where ancient people lived in a village at least 5,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest settlements in North America?

For the centuries that followed, the riches of the Rio Grande helped sustain life for Native American tribes indigenous to the region.

In 1598, the Spanish came to the El Paso Rio Grande to colonize New Spain.

That event named our city, and set the stage for centuries of Spanish rule, integrating European ways with Native American traditions, building the country's oldest Mission Trail, and ultimately, the cultural foundation of the American Southwest.

El Paso had always been an important north-south route, but it's role in east-west travel grew in the 1840s with the California gold rush, followed by the arrival of the military and then the Indian wars.

But the Pass of the North exploded in the 1880s, when the railroads turned it into a hub of business and transportation.

The railroads also brought gamblers, gunslingers and houses of ill repute, as El Paso became the epicenter of the Wild Old West.

That's just some of our rich treasure trove of history -- so rich that if people knew about it, they would come to visit.

It's almost that easy.

But now we need to start telling them, as we take our rightful place in a growing industry sector called heritage tourism.

Heritage tourists are among the most desirable visitors to any city. And it's not just because they like and seek out locations with history.

It's also because they spend an additional $438 per day, over and above what a typical tourist spends, according to a recent survey by the Texas Historical Commission.

We have the history. Now we need to build and support the services, resources and infrastructure needed to make our rich history and historic treasures available and accessible for tourists.

An important step was taken last March when more than 400 people attended the first El Paso History Summit.

Organized by several local history groups, the summit included a town hall meeting that was streamed live online where people were able to share their views about what's important in El Paso history.

The good news is that another summit with even broader participation is planned for next March, this time called the El Paso Heritage Tourism Summit.

Again the El Paso History Radio Show will partner with the El Paso Heritage Alliance and the El Paso County Historical Commission to organize the summit, joined by the El Paso Convention and Visitors Bureau.

We are all on a common path to promote El Paso's rich heritage and history.

And there is so much history that I haven't mentioned: architecture, civil rights, Mexican Revolution, Hueco Tanks, geology, the mountains, archaeology.

And El Paso is the gateway to Mexico, as it becomes a good place to visit again.

Imagine what happens when all that is mixed with our world-class art museum, Triple-A baseball and Downtown events.

Tourists will able to choose from a multi-faceted menu of places to go and things to do.

Promoting El Paso's authentic nature can make it a destination city visited by tourists from around the world.

Documentary filmmaker Jackson H. Polk, an El Paso native, hosts a local radio show about El Paso history and makes TV documentaries about the region's history and heritage. www.EPHistory.com

e what a typical tourist spends, according to a recent survey by the Texas Historical Commission.

We have the history. Now we need to build and support the services, resources and infrastructure needed to make our rich history and historic treasures available and accessible for tourists.

An important step was taken last March when more than 400 people attended the first El Paso History Summit.

Organized by several local history groups, the summit included a town hall meeting that was streamed live online where people were able to share their views about what's important in El Paso history.

The good news is that another summit with even broader participation is planned for next March, this time called the El Paso Heritage Tourism Summit.

Again the El Paso History Radio Show will partner with the El Paso Heritage Alliance and the El Paso County Historical Commission to organize the summit, joined by the El Paso Convention and Visitors Bureau.

We are all on a common path to promote El Paso's rich heritage and history.

And there is so much history that I haven't mentioned: architecture, civil rights, Mexican Revolution, Hueco Tanks, geology, the mountains, archaeology.

And El Paso is the gateway to Mexico, as it becomes a good place to visit again.

Imagine what happens when all that is mixed with our world-class art museum, Triple-A baseball and Downtown events.

Tourists will able to choose from a multi-faceted menu of places to go and things to do.

Promoting El Paso's authentic nature can make it a destination city visited by tourists from around the world.

Documentary filmmaker Jackson H. Polk, an El Paso native, hosts a local radio show about El Paso history and makes TV documentaries about the region's history and heritage. www.EPHistory.com 

Top Green Cities

Our Green Cities along with Corporate Knights has issued its list of the greenest cities in the United States.  The good news for El Paso is that it has made great strides and is one of the cities that has “exhibited the most changes”. Still El Paso is ranked 33^rd in a list of 54 major cities.  Several southwestern cities ranked above El Paso – Denver (4), Albuquerque (5), Phoenix (8) and Tucson, tied with Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth (17). The methodology (criteria) for determining the rankings includes smart growth activities; land-use planning, programs, policies and zoning; transportation planning programs and policies; pollution prevention, reduction and remediation, efficiency and sustainability projects and administration. We are on the right track – but there is more to do. Grow but grow smart.

El Pasoans deserve the pats on the back for conserving water in 2011. But what more is being done to conserve water, recycle water, utilize rainwater? Whenever I discuss rain and water conservation, I get email reminding me of the programs by the City of Tucson which has a number of web pages devoted to rainwater harvesting. Their online publications are instructive. A leading El Paso LEED designer especially recommends the Water Harvesting Guidance Manual.

It’s often thought that a “green” house is quite expensive. However, read about this Washington D.C. empower house that produces all of its own energy and harvests rainwater too.

By an overwhelming 70% El Pasoans said “yes” to investing in projects that will make our great city greater. Among the projects to be financed is the Interactive Digital Wall at the El Paso Museum of History. Exactly what is a digital wall? There’s one in Copenhagen and here is the description.  Also watch this short video.  Pretty cool technology indeed. The question some ask is: Will our wall display El Paso history and culture or be a mere PR piece such as this video recently presented by the Museum of History?  The video is good PR (a savvy friend of mine in New York City liked it), but is short in substance when it comes to El Paso, its neighborhoods, history and culture. It makes me wonder what will be displayed on the Digital Wall. What can be displayed is prehistory, geological history, history of the indigenous, the Spaniards, the Mexicans, the Gringos, railroads, cattle, gunfighters and outlaws – all tied into events, tours, reenactments and more. Like ecotourism, heritage tourism can be a multi-million (some say billion) dollar industry for El Paso. Relish and take pride in what has made us El Paso and El Pasoans. That is why, for example, it was good to see that the City decided to refurbish our old street cars rather than buying replicas. Will the City also refurbish the old trolley barn or a build a new one for $4 million? Will a trolley system provide access for tourists to historical treasures such as the Magoffin Home, a Texas State Historic Site? By the way, streetcars have helped to revitalize city transit in Portland, Oregon, number one on the Greenest Cities list.  Elpasonaturally will be talking more about heritage tourism in 2013.

Finally, get away from electronics (the computer, your cell phone, iPad and so forth) and go backpacking or just take a hike. A recent study indicates that nature nurtures creativity. Of course, creativity can lead to better productivity and efficiency. Hmmm . . . keeping that open space natural may just mean more economic wealth – a tangible metric many can get their arms around and embrace.