Springfield tourism
Here are listed links to pieces about both the Lincoln and the non-Lincoln tourism businesses in Springfield, including tourism-related sites and issues. Conventioneers, arguably, are tourists, but pieces about the capital city's convention center are listed on the main Springfield topic page.
Springfield has hosted travelers from a world curious about Abraham Lincoln since his assassination in 1865. With the advent of the automobile and mass tourism, visitors came to the capital in numbers sufficient to constitute a market. To a city suffering from the loss of its smokestack industries, the tourism industry promised to be a godsend.
So it has proved—to people making their livings as tourism promoters. For decades they argued to gullible officials that people who come to see the great man's house and the tomb can be enticed to stay longer and spend more by giving them more. Make history tourism entertaining rather than just informative, they said in effect, and, if necessary, make it entertaining and not informative. More sites (and not only Lincoln sites), more facts, more fun.
Springfield thus has come to remind me of the dinner host who, after you’ve eaten, insists you stay and look at their vacation slides. The result has been the visitor centers that tell tourists what they are about to see, interpretive exhibits, audio-visual extravaganzas—and visitor numbers that, adjusted for population growth, get smaller and smaller by the year.
The tourism industry was a frequent topic of mine mainly because it offered irresistible targets for mockery. But I’d no idea until I prepared this archives just how many time I’d written about it. The explanation is that I care about history and entertain a vain hope that it can be made intelligible and relevant to a wider audience. And it's an easy target.
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If You Don’t Market It, Will They Come?
A new study promotes tourism promotion
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times March 31, 2016
The NPS plans for the past of the Lincoln Home
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times January 19, 2010
Why tourism promises more than it deliver
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times March 9, 2017
A Penny Here, a Penny There . . .
Will a monumental Lincoln penny bring in tourist dollars?
"Dyspepesiana" Illinois Times March 14, 2013
The NPS plans the next 20 years at Lincoln’s home
"Dyspepesiana" Illinois Times September 2, 2010
What lies beneath Abe World’s Lincoln hat?
"Dyspepesiana" Illinois Times February 21, 2013
My life as a guide at the Lincoln-Herndon law offices
"Dyspepesiana" Illinois Times November 5, 2009
Authenticity and the tourist’s Lincoln
"Prejudices" Illinois Times February 10, 1983
The Lincoln home for the automobile tourist
Adventure Road September/October 1985
Enticing tourists to linger an extra night
"Dyspepesiana" Illinois Times December 22, 2010
The Old State Capitol: Tarnished Jewel
Springfield squabbles over an inheritance
"Prejudices" Illinois Times January 30, 1981
The Old Capitol: The Higher Vaudeville
They built it; they didn’t come
"Prejudices" Illinois Times February 6, 1981
Spring, when the crocus and the tourist bloom
“Prejudices” Illinois Times April 8, 1977
From tiny acorns Presidential libraries grow
“Prejudices” Illinois Times ca 1990
Our new sculptors don’t do justice to our history
“Prejudices” Illinois Times October 12, 1979
Getting tourists off at the Dana-Thomas house
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times April 1, 2010
“A Neat and Appropriate Address”
Lincoln’s farewell to Springfield as a Guinness gag
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times February 24, 2011
Will tourists arrive where Lincoln departed?
Illinois Times August 4, 1978
A Lively and Active Neighborhood
The NPS's stage-set authenticity at Lincoln's home
“Prejudices” Illinois Times February 11, 1982
A show bringing Lincoln's capitol to life dies at the box office
“Prejudices” Illinois Times February 10, 1978
The Springfield race riots of 1908 and community memory
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times Oct. 29, 2009
My Life as a Guide at the Lincoln Law Offices
Part barker, part sheep dog, part player piano
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times November 5, 2009
Springfield needs new attractions to draw the tourists
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times January 10, 2013
The Presidential Museum Turns Five
Is the world growing bored with rubber Lincolns?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times April 29, 2010
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