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5 <br />Current prospect <br />This consultation grant will underwrite coalescing one regional node in the <br />projected matrix of nodes. It will bring to bear technical experts, like: <br />archaeologists, land grant researchers, specialized landscape architects, <br />regional planners and historians needed to assess each of several sites in a <br />regional heritage matrix. These consultants will authenticate local sites and <br />prepare preliminary interpretations and thus make the final product more <br />understandable at the local and county levels. The end product will be a clear <br />picture of exploitable Trading Path related sites in a three county area in North <br />Carolina and will recommend a framework for planning a three county tourism <br />consortium. It is believed that success in this case will offer inducement to other, <br />similar counties and towns to protect and develop their Contact Era landscapes <br />and archaeological sites. <br />Heritage tourism provides a rationale for protecting antiquities. And heritage <br />tourism works best regionally, not locally. There are precious few Williamsburgs; <br />dense concentrations of artifacts. Most counties and towns have but a handful of <br />attractive sites, but joint venturing with neighboring counties will multiply the <br />value of the heritage assets of all involved counties and towns. The TPA wants <br />to develop a scope and prospect statement for three counties and two <br />municipalities in NC; Orange, Durham, and Person counties and the towns of <br />Chapel Fill] and Durham.. All these entities will be beneficiaries of a coordinated <br />tourism development program. All have considerable unprotected and largely <br />unnoted Contact Era and Trading Path assets. <br />Specific elements of the project <br />Durham City and County <br />In Durham County and in cooperation with the NC historic site at Stagville and <br />with the US Army Corps of Engineers, the TPA will reinterpret the Stagville state <br />historic site to incorporate its pre-Stagville history as a crucial ford along the 17th <br />and 18th century Trading Path. <br />Stagville, an existing tourism site, exists where it is because of the Flat River <br />crossings it exploited. Yet that aspect remains unnoted in the sites interpretation. <br />So, in a sense, one product of this proposed project will be a broadened <br />reinterpretation of an existing heritage site. Preliminary studies have located a <br />packhorse ford and two 18th-century bridge sites heretofore unnoted at Stagville. <br />These revealed remnant roadbeds indicating the complex of transportation <br />options concentrated at this Flat River crossing. It is quite likely that further study <br />will reveal the presence at or near the Stagville stream crossings of a Contact <br />Era Native American or blended Contact Era village site as well. <br />Page 2 of '4