While the United States of America is blowing out the candles on its 250th birthday cake, Heritage Village will also be celebrating a milestone. The historical park and museum commemorates its 50th anniversary with the launch of the “Power of Place” oral history program, designed to capture, preserve and celebrate the stories of the people of Pinellas County through first-person narrative accounts.
Founded in 1976, Heritage Village was part of a movement in the 1970s across the country towards local and social history preservation.
“The bicentennial movement in 1976, which celebrated the USA’s 200th birthday, really spurred tons of different historical societies nationwide to pop up other local open air history museums, like Heritage Village,” explained Monica Drake, Historical Museum Operations Manager at Heritage Village Museum and Park. “Public History capture really became a big deal.”
“Heritage Village is really special because it connects Pinellas to the larger narrative of the US. Local history is really people’s first foray into interacting with their ancestors, or where they come from, or what it means to be from Pinellas County or Florida or America.”…