Territorial Entanglements: Memory and Recreation at North Carolina’s Somerset Place State Historic Site
Topics: Cultural Geography
, Tourism Geography
, Landscape
Keywords: Territory, public history, memory, landscape, US South, tourism
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 10
Authors:
Mary Biggs, UNC Chapel Hill
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Abstract
I examine material intersections between landscapes of public history and outdoor recreation through the lens of territory and property at Somerset Place State Historic Site. After its tenure as one of North Carolina’s largest plantations, Somerset Place was first preserved as part of Pettigrew State Park, then shifted to state historic site status in the mid-20th century. Today, the park still surrounds it, and one of the main hiking trails cuts directly between historic buildings, following an old carriage road that the former owners used to view their property (both land and human) and take the air. Somerset’s conjoined landscape of memory and recreation is distinct, though not unusual, and raises an important question: how do public historic sites, especially former plantations such as Somerset, reconcile the vital and often very un-recreational histories they interpret, with institutional legacies and spaces that value family-friendly recreation? I use archival sources, including newspapers, public records of Somerset Place’s development, and institutional histories of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, to interrogate the ways in which territory and property both reflect and perpetuate specific cultural associations between public history and public recreation in the landscape that have deep consequences for how we view and construct past, present, and future. In a moment when ethno-nationalist politicians are passing ever more extreme laws about what can and cannot be said about race, slavery, and white supremacy in school, the project of examining what, where, and how we remember is more important than ever.
Territorial Entanglements: Memory and Recreation at North Carolina’s Somerset Place State Historic Site
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
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