It was a lovely reminder of how inspiring how rich the American heritage is.
A new online guide to American heritage sites is underway with the goal of giving families a trustworthy one-stop resource for planning educational visits. The site gives insider tips for tourist activities and even grades the sites for the accuracy of their information. In today's episode, we speak to the woman spearheading the endeavor about the goals of the program
and why it's so important to pass on the American story to the next generation. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley, and this is a weekend episode of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Brenda Haffera, Assistant Director and Research Fellow for the Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
Brenda, thanks for coming on. It's a pleasure to be here. So the Heritage Foundation has recently started compiling a list of historic sites across
“all 50 states, just to tell us what was the inspiration for doing this?”
Yes, so the Heritage Guide to Historic Site is a product that pinpoints and evaluates historic sites all around the country places like battlefields and forts, but also places like Mark Twain's House. Those are part of the American story as well, and it pinpoints these places and each site page provides information about what are the main tours and exhibits on offer some recommended
readings. Why is this place significant? We know what happened here, and then tips for families, which could be things like, you know, this tour may be accurate, but may not be age-appropriate. So the goal of that is to encourage people, American citizens, to go to historic sites,
to celebrate America 250 this summer. This is how we re-educate ourselves about our heritage, so that's one goal.
And the second piece is the third party accountability piece of each site receives a grade
of A, B, or C with A being good, B being a mixed bag, and C being actively distorted based on accuracy and comprehension, proportionality, and ideological bias. Now is this site that you're making competing with a pre-existing site that maybe the government
“does, or is this a whole new enterprise that you're working on?”
No, it's completely new. There's nothing out there like it, because it evaluates all kinds of sites. So a lot of other sites focus on only sites owned by the National Park Service, or only sites in a specific state. This covers them all.
We have 130 so far, we have at least one in every state with the hope that folks will be able to find one within driving distance so that they can make those family excursions. And it's also user-friendly, which some of those other sites are a little bit of a mixed bag, I would say. Now what are some of the notable sites, just off the top of your head, that you have already
reviewed and put on your website? There are the big ones, of course, like Gettysburg, Speaker Nuke, King Ridge, was kind of enough to review that site for us, so battlefields, but also I would say some of my favorite sites, Mount Vernon, of course, which preserves the indispensable man George Washington, they're doing a great job, but some of my favorite are actually the lesser known kind
of off-the-beaten track sites. So we have Noah Webster's House of Webster Dictionary Fame, and the evaluator of that site talks about the importance of language for forming a common culture and a common character. So the sites are wonderful in that, they each tell an individual story, but they come together to tell the American story, which is not just battlefields and forts, it's also the words
of the Gettysburg address and the Declaration of Independence, it's the spirit of American Enterprise, with the right brothers, it's John Trumball's paintings at Mount Vernon, it's it's so rich and wonderful. Imagine inviting about a dozen friends to pray in your home, and your city telling you
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That's Quinn's.com/wire. But this seems like a very large enterprise to take on how big is your team and who is making the decisions about which sites to include and who's doing the research. Yeah, so we wanted the most significant and popular sites in each state. We did have to cap some because there are so many wonderful places in Virginia and Massachusetts.
Others like Alaska, or a little bit harder to find a site in that state. But it's wonderful.
“And what was really important for this project is we selected evaluators whose backgrounds”
are relevant for the site themselves.
So we had a lot of historians, but we also had architects and poets. We had a poet review Edgar Allan Poe's house, which adds to the charm of the guide because they love what they're writing about and they want to tell you more about it. But that also really helps with the accountability piece because some of these sites are quite sneaky in their historical distortions and the casual observer or someone who's going
to learn, which is most of us, right? That's why we go to these places. We want to learn about something we don't know much about. Those sneaky distortions can be hard to catch, so we wanted folks who would be able to find those and write about those.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you not to bring the negative energy here, but I wanted to ask you specifically about that.
“Did you find a lot of distortion in a lot of these sites?”
Sadly, quite a bit. So James Madison's home Montpire, he was the father of the Constitution, he's an incredibly important figure. There are no exhibits dedicated to James Madison at his own home. So that's a problem of not including relevant material that needs to be included.
The full story of America certainly includes James Madison. So there are those sorts of problems. There's this trend of her historic sites wanting to engage in activism rather than their inherent value as centers of civic education. So there's nothing wrong with activism for adults.
You know, anyone is free to rally for a cause or to address a political issue and there are many such organizations, but there's only one Monticello. So we believe that these places should focus on what makes them inherently valuable. And they can do and often should do other things. But if they don't address that, then they have fallen short of their stewardship and their
civic duty. The Trump administration has focused on this on some levels with national parks. Have they looked into some of the sites that you guys have rated and are asking for revisions, etc. So this was an independent project about 30% of the sites on our guide are owned by the
National Park Service. And I would say they're doing an okay job. There are certainly instances. None of them get a C. So none of them are the worst sites on the guide, but quite a number of them do get a B. And some of the issues that have been identified.
Some national park service have adopted the progressive view of the civil rights movement. And we'll contend, for example, that that extends to LGBTQ+ rights and materials.
So some of our historic sites, particularly during Pride Month, which we aler...
to, there are those kinds of issues that we're seeing.
“Now are you planning on to have like a coffee table book or something?”
I'm just thinking to me as a consumer that would be something I'd be interested in. How big is this project? So it's 130 sites so far, we say. So this is something, it is a living breathing project.
Just as America to 50 continues after this summer, we're going to continue this project
after this summer. So we're going to update it regularly, really. And there's a form on the website where anyone can go in and say, here's another site
“that you could, you should go to, or things have changed since you were last there.”
We do have an activity book for kids that people can print out and we might have printed
materials in the future, but right now, because we want to be able to update this regularly, it is a website at historicsitesetheritage.org. So having visited many of these sites and looked into this, has your view of history or American history been changed in any way? I would say it was a lovely reminder of just reading through the evaluation
of how inspiring, how rich the American heritage is to revisit things like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and that kind of spirit of imagination that you get
“inculcated when you read those books. And that's, I think, why some of these sites are so important.”
There are a way that we introduce our children to the national narrative that is the American story. We help them develop their moral imagination. So just the sheer diversity of their architectural sites, their John Trombles paintings, there's the Gettysburg Address, there's Independence Hall, and it's just just reading them. It's so inspiring. It's going to make you want to visit. It's going to make you want to take your families. These are, you know,
as a bonus, touch grass activities, no screens involved, and that's wonderful families that opportunity. But this is how we re-educate ourselves and remind ourselves who we are as Americans. Alright, well Brenda, thank you so much for coming on and speaking with us today. It was a real pleasure. Thank you for having me. That was Brenda Huffera Assistant Director and Research Fellow for the Simon Center for American Studies
at the Heritage Foundation, and this has been a week in addition to Morningwiner. [BLANK_AUDIO]
