Resources of 8 local communities spotlighted

Thursday, February 4, 2010

By KATHY CLEVELAND

Staff Writer

MILFORD – “Listen, my children, and you will hear …”

Schoolchildren all over the country read that poem about Paul Revere’s ride and learn about Lexington and Concord and the role Massachusetts towns played in the birth of this country.

They also learn about the Minutemen and Thoreau’s Walden Pond.

But how many people know about New Hampshire’s role in the American Revolution or about Milford’s pioneer village of Monson, or that this state’s first cotton mill was built in New Ipswich and laid the foundation of America’s Industrial Revolution?

Probably few.

A small group of people who gathered in Milford Town Hall on Jan. 26 are part of a plan to shine a spotlight on the natural and historical resources of eight New Hampshire communities.

Milford, Amherst, Brookline, Greenville, Hollis, Mason, New Ipswich and Nashua are in the newly created Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area.

The 45-community area also includes 36 towns in Massachusetts and was recently designated by the National Park Service.

Freedom’s Way is the most recent National Heritage Area. It was established by an act of Congress last spring, joining 49 other heritage areas in the country. The nearest is Blackstone River Valley in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

With $25,000 from the National Park Service, organizers for the Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area have three years to put together a plan for the Secretary of the Interior, said Alene Reich, the executive director of Freedom’s Way.

The Souhegan Valley Chamber of Commerce organized the meeting. Chamber Director May Balsama said Hollis’ old apple orchards and Milford’s quarries are among points of interest that could be celebrated in Freedom’s Way.

But Paul Hemmerich, of the Hollis Historic District Commission, said “I am still trying to wrap my mind” around the idea, and the sprawling area has no consistent theme.

Reich said the theme is “a landscape of visionaries,” and the Heritage Area is something like a national park but with no park rangers or parking lots.

And although “heritage tourism” is obvious in the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg, Pa., she said, it will be possible to “get people into small towns and promote what already exists” here.

What this area does have, Balsama said, “is natural, cultural and historic assets” that could lend themselves to cultural centers and instructive displays.

The roughly two dozen residents who came to the meeting were people who are involved in their towns’ historical societies or heritage commissions, and they were asked to make a list of what’s special in their towns.

“We don’t want to be left out because we are on the wrong side of the border,” said Balsama, referring to Massachusetts, where there are already several interpretive centers, including the National Heritage Museum in Lexington and the Minute Man National Historic Park in Concord.

Peter Webb, of Brookline, described the role of participants as “cheerleaders and information gatherers” whose job is to create an inventory of assets “so we can say, ‘Here’s what we bring to the table.’ ”

Webb also stressed some people are suspicious of the Heritage Area, thinking it means some kind of regulation and fearing it will take away rights.

“Be aware there’s an instinctive distrust,” he said. The Heritage Area “has no authority to regulate anything. It is not zoning.”

“We are not regulatory as much as celebratory,” said Balsama, who stressed the benefits of Freedom’s Way for local commerce.

For more information, visit www.freedomsway.org.