The Vision Plan: Cultural and Historical Corridors

The importance of historical and cultural resource concentrations along populated river corridors (and coastal) areas has been recognized by many. Recent greenway related research supports this thesis. Both the Phil Lewis Study in Wisconsin (1964), and Kerry Dawson's research in Georgia (1996) found that over 90% of the major historical resources are found along river corridors (and along coastal areas). Our greenway planners were very much aware of this research. In addition, last year President Clinton named fourteen rivers as nationally significant Heritage Rivers, (three of the fourteen are in New England). The President also named sixteen Millennium Trails, which have national significance. Three out of the sixteen Millennium Trails are in or travel through New England. Two of Millennium Trails were nominated, primarily for their nationally significant historical and cultural value. These two are the East Coast Greenway that traverses along the entire New England coast and the internationally known Freedom Trail in Boston. We analyzed our state by state findings of historical and cultural resources within New England. Not surprisingly, the National Heritage Corridors and the East Coast Greenway covered the great majority of New England's significant historical and cultural corridors. One river corridor, the Nasseau River Corridor in New Hampshire received only state level designation from New Hampshire. Interestingly, the federal designation of nationally significant rivers implicated a corridor width of one town on both sides of the rivers as nationally significant areas. Obviously it does not mean that every square foot in each town along the Heritage rivers are worthy of protection. Instead we interpreted this designation to mean that the concentration of historic and culturally significant sites and even historic districts are high in these cities and towns. Table 3 shows the number of towns and their approximate area by state along the Heritage Rivers in New England. When we mapped the East Coast Greenway, we used a similar approach used for the heritage rivers. Heritage rivers (and rivers in general) typically serve as town boundaries. The East Coast Greenway, however, crosses towns without respect to boundaries. For this reason we included only those towns as significant, which include some segments of the East Coast greenway. A detailed examination, however, of the path of the East Coast Greenway could easily increase the number of coastal towns that are significant. Since the planning of this project is at the scale of New England and since this is only a generalized vision plan, this level of accuracy was thought to be sufficient. Figure 10 shows New England's greenway corridors within historical and cultural areas of concern. This project studied the heritage rivers initiated by the federal government and the state of New Hampshire, and the heritage areas connected by the East Coast Greenway initiated by the East-Coast Alliance. We envision, that in the near future a national network of heritage trails and corridors will be created, both along the Heritage Rivers and the Millennium Trails.      Heritage Rivers  Greenway Corridors  Total  acres  # of towns  acres  # of towns  acres  percent  # of towns  CT  1,170,900  49  1,015,025  30  2,185,925  67  79  MA  875,798  57  597,246  39  1,473,044  27  96  ME    1,325,000  53  1,325,000  6  53  NH  1,868,800  44  214,624  8  2,083,424  35  52 RI  409,200  23  88,950  5  498,150  72  28  VT  1,164,800  27  1,164,800  19  27  NE  5,489,498  200  3,240,845  135  8,730,343  21  335 Table 3. Significant Historical and Cultural Greenway Corridors.   Figure 10. New England's Greenways within Historical and Cultural Corridors.