Heritage Tourism
This type of tourism focuses on the cultural heritage of an area. Culture remains an appealing purpose of travel for many.
Projects
Sussex County Natural and Cultural Heritage Bus Tour Program
To promote local economic growth countywide via tourism and to better extend and diversify the county’s traditional beach tourism assets (its “cash cow”), SCCI collaborated with Southern Delaware Tourism to add experience offerings that are unique and indigenous to the county’s landscape, character and heritage. Southern Delaware Tourism identified various interest-driven heritage tours that traverse Sussex County as one of these experience offerings that had great potential. This initiative developed into a monthly bus tour that accented a particular theme (or interest) each month. You can read more about these bus tours at the Visit Southern Delaware website.
Lewes, DE and its Menhaden Industry: An Interactive Exhibit
Lewes, Delaware was once ranked as the top fishing port in the United States in terms of volume of fish landed. A decade later, the fishery was essentially shuttered as catches declined Precipitously, and by 1967 the massive factories that had once lined the town’s bayfront were closed permanently. The collections and archives of The Lewes Historical Society’s museum contain invaluable historic reference material about this era. SCCI supported the Lewes Historical Society’s development of an interactive exhibit that allows visitors to explore the collections as they relate both to historic and current elements of the fishing industry in Lewes. This exhibit is housed in the Society’s Cannonball House/Lewes Maritime Museum.
Presentations
Publications
Heritage Tourism Planning Guidebook (PDF 4.5MB) published 2007 by the Center for Historic Design and Architecture in partnership with Institute for Public Administration, University of Delaware.
HeritageTourismSussexCo (PDF 4MB) published August 2008 by Xuan Jiang and Andrew Homsey of the Institute for Public Administration, University of Delaware.