Birthplace of Baseball or Village of Museums? The Packaging of Heritage Tourism in Cooperstown, New York

Abstract

This paper examines the forces that influence the development of heritage tourism in Cooperstown, New York and provides evidence of landscape change resulting from tourism growth. One family has exerted a great deal of influence in determining what facets of heritage are packaged as nostalgic. But the struggle to maintain this, or any, particular heritage is met with resistance as free-market forces circumvent communities' desires to preserve a specific aspect of history. Although Cooperstown is unique as the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame it has many characteristics common to other small rural villages struggling to maintain their cultural heritage. Central to this struggle is how places are packaged and who gets to decide what is authentic. The substantial increase in the Baseball Hall of Fame attendance in the last 20 years has brought about social and economic changes that now challenge the way in which Cooperstown is packaged. Although the village has avoided commercial development of shopping malls and fast-food restaurants, other consequences such as traffic congestion, crowding and the transition away from a local-retail based business district have been unavoidable.

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