Waterloo, Part 6: Throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

Kevin Wright©2011

Because tourism “is a highly sophisticated, fast-changing industry,” destinations must satisfy real visitor expectations to succeed. According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, heritage tourists come “to experience the places and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present." Studies conducted at the National monuments in Washington D. C. offer a surprising insight: tourists “do not primarily seek knowledge or learning—although interpreters and educators sometimes view learning as the visitor’s primary motivation.” If that were their main objective, they could more easily obtain relevant information through books, television and websites. Instead, visitors come to experience firsthand the actual places where history was made and to connect intellectually and emotionally with the past. Because of the transactional nature of “meaning-making,” a firsthand experience of history is irreplaceable—there is no substitute! Therefore, an accurate, inclusive, well-told story is the key to success.

Percy Leach had it right when he said, “In [Waterloo] village, you could walk through history in an afternoon. There was everything from an Indian burial ground to specters of Victorian opulence." It is that Waterloo (and not the fantasy projected upon it) that deserves to saved—for what it is, for what it truly says about our past, and not for what we might imagine or wish the past to be. Historic sites are not entertainment parks that sell a fantastical escape from reality. While historic sites may be entertaining and hopefully educational, they address a far deeper set of emotional and intellectual needs. I believe I speak from experience. 

Roy Smith befriended me long ago because he wanted the remarkable story of his family to be truly told. That story would have moved the pen of Charles Dickens. It begins with an American Everyman—a man with the most common of names, John Smith—who never saw the inside of a schoolroom as a child, huddling many a cold and lonely hour in a charcoal burner’s hovel, tending the smoldering coal pits. Many years later, his obituary highlighted his meager start in life, sighing: “Without money—without even the advantages of the most ordinary education, and without friends able or disposed to render him any pecuniary aid, with no capital but a vigorous frame, a sound head, an honest heart, and indomitable energy, he commenced to battle with the world.” Here we connect with the truly American story of self-made men and women, who exceed their original stations in life by sheer force of character and native talent. In so doing, they lifted this Nation in only three generations from the most primitive circumstances of a colonial frontier into the ranks of a global powerhouse. As Old World social hierarchies eroded, Americans came gradually to champion equal opportunity against both the real and perceived economic privileges of closed, self-ordained elites. Although the trajectory was set, the transformation was (and is) halting.

Waterloo also tells the timely story of America’s first energy crisis! As seaport villages grew from colonial footholds into manufacturing cities, their populations soon exhausted woodlots within carting range. While extensive tracts of timberland were cheaply available in advance of agricultural settlement, once old-growth forests were cut, coaled or cleared for farmland, Highland ironworks languished for fuel. Watching 16,000 cords of wood annually go up in smoke in his two furnaces and forge, one New Jersey ironmaker complained that 20,000 acres of woodland were hardly sufficient to supply a single furnace.

Fuel economy invited city dwellers and mechanics to import bituminous coal from Virginia or Great Britain, but when a British blockade cut off supplies from these sources during the War of 1812, Americans were forced to take a hard look at “stone coal.” Abundant reserves of this promising new fuel were relatively close at hand—a vast anthracite formation covers 470 square miles of northeastern Pennsylvania, comprehending in its range mountains at the head of the Schuylkill, Lehigh and Lackawaxen Rivers—but untamed rivers and execrable roads made it difficult to reach consumers. Foundrymen and farmers alike looked to a system of internal improvements to defeat topographical obstacles that lay in the way of progress. The first generation of American civil engineers and high financiers was raised in the process. To comprehend their boldness of vision, look to Inclined Plane No. 4 West at Waterloo. The Morris Canal and its remarkable system of hydraulic inclined planes represent memorable first steps in a Mechanical Revolution that would drastically change traditional methods of doing things and going places. In the space of a generation the whole scope of agricultural and industrial production, finance, transportation, and communication would enlarge beyond any past imagining. 

And what of Waterloo’s history as a turntable railroad junction? The first locomotive railroad to pierce the Highlands and intrude upon the Great Appalachian Valley beyond—the Sussex Railroad—opened between Newton and Waterloo on December 11, 1854, connecting with the Morris & Essex on the south side of the Musconetcong River. The trip to market, taking three to five days by wagon, was suddenly reduced to five hours with an equally great reduction in expense. Within a matter of decades, cheap canal-and-rail-transported coal heated cook stoves and residential furnaces while freeing industry from its age-old dependence upon natural waterpowers dispersed throughout the countryside. Multifarious short-line railways, canals and steamboat lines gradually interlocked regional economies, slowly and haphazardly knitting a national marketplace. With improved circulation of people and goods, cities seemingly grew overnight, drawing raw materials for industry as well as increasing numbers of immigrant laborers to tend the new system of mechanized production. The scope of doing things, of making things, of consuming things, escalated rapidly. Before yielding to the automobile and airplane, railroads came to embody American technological ambitions of conquering time, distance and nature on an intercontinental scale.

But as we see in our own time, the glory of the world is transitory. In natural progression, the Gilded Age sons of self-made men and women became the very moneyed aristocracy their forebears had so piously railed against. Such was the case with the Waterloo Smiths. Bypassed by the railroad in 1902, Waterloo “maintained its quiet air of aristocracy and privacy, the equal of which would be difficult to find in such close proximity to the busy marts of the world.” The Smith family, owners of 2,300 acres, consequently formed the Lake Waterloo Estates Land and Developing Company in 1929 with plans to develop their property in three distinct suburban subdivisions. The Great Depression collapsed their hopes and fortunes. Trustees for the reorganized Hackettstown Bank sold the former Smith lands at Waterloo, comprising nearly 1,850 acres, to the Lake Waterloo Corporation on May 6, 1945, threatening to drag the time-locked village into the modern world. 

This story has many interesting nuances that cannot be told in a nutshell. But has its telling ever really been tried? Instead, we are told to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Deception lies at the heart of every entertaining magic trick—the substitution of something flashy, misdirecting our attention, which invites a suspension of belief in our usual acceptance of the laws of causality.

Announcing the opening of the 1978 season, the Sunday Star-Ledger for April 23, 1978, claimed Waterloo Village was “the only remaining natural colonial village in Northern New Jersey” and “not a reconstruction, like many other ‘historic’ developments….“ The latter claim was a strong selling point until it was abandoned. But to portray Waterloo as a “natural colonial town” is to misrepresent the facts: while the antecedent Andover Forge Farm is a very important part of Waterloo’s story, it is not visually apparent to most visitors and can only be revealed by peeling away layers of time through a variety of interpretive techniques. Downplaying the decisive and significant nineteenth century transformation of the hamlet is troubling and foolish. 

Typically, village officials announced plans in 1981 to reconstruct the eighteenth-century forge on its supposed original site, even mistakenly claiming, “one can see the remains of an old waterwheel that was used by the forge.” It was further suggested, ''We plan to excavate, salvage any machinery we find and fabricate the rest.'' Good luck with that! First of all, the happily unrealized plan misidentified the foundation of the eighteenth-century gristmill as the site of the forge! Secondly, restoring the forge on its original site (which they failed to correctly identify through the absence of any historical interest or inquiry) would require destruction of the nineteenth-century grist, saw and plaster mills! Most astonishingly, plans for its reconstruction depicted not a forge, but a charcoal iron furnace! They didn’t even know the difference! In reality, Andover Forge was a stone building, measuring about 50 by 30 feet, with four brick chimneys, designed for the English or Walloon method of forging, whereby cast iron was decarburized in a finery, then reheated at a chafery for forging. The discovery of “any machinery” was most unlikely since scavengers removed brick from its chimneys and re-usable pieces of its machinery as early as 1797! So much for history and authenticity!

Sadly, here and elsewhere there seems to be a silly, self-defeating tendency to overemphasize or even invent eighteenth-century or earlier aspects of certain historic sites, ignoring or even misrepresenting how much their extant appearance and significance belongs to subsequent, but equally interesting, epochs. Perceptual problems multiply when a site holds powerful associations with earlier events that are no longer physically apparent in its extant fabric and appearance. This does not mean the earlier story must be discarded; it simply means it must be conveyed through an appropriate interpretive strategy.

One more anecdote, if you please. How many times was it advertised that John Smith “revived the ironworks with the establishment of the Waterloo Foundry, which he named in celebration of Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Belgium, in 1815.” Apart from the fact that John Smith’s bloomery, situated a mile or so upstream from Waterloo, was called New Andover, this toponymic explanation is most implausible, given that John Smith was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel of the Second, Upper or Western Regiment of Morris County Militia on November 2, 1811, and served in this military capacity throughout the War of 1812 against England! He would have been foolhardy at best (and most likely regarded as treasonous) if he had celebrated an enemy victory. In fact, the village was not re-named Waterloo until 1840 and for an entirely different reason.

Studies indicate historical authenticity adds a compelling sense of uniqueness and hence drawing power to heritage attractions. You build an audience by effectively and accurately conveying the salient meaning of a storied place; this alone sustains interest, fuels advocacy and drives revenues. A historic site’s purpose and potential are unrealized without quality interpretation.  But with the exception of dedicated and knowledgeable volunteers, who opened the Museum of the Canal Society of New Jersey on summer weekends and during major events, together with a small group of reliable veterans, interpretation at Waterloo (when I was there) generally consisted of handing out mimeographed tour sheets to seasonal staff as they came onboard in early summer. These were to be hopefully memorized (or at least read to visitors) and the results were predictably uneven. No deeper understanding was expected or really possible; the collections of antiques simply did not authentically represent the actual furnishings of previous occupants of the village. Tours of the four “decorated” houses consisted of reciting household inventories, spiced with a few largely questionable generic anecdotes. Since no furnished bedrooms were shown, I often heard visitors remark on how exceptionable the historic inhabitants of the village truly were, since they never had to sleep!

Waterloo Village almost seems a flippant exercise of Shoeless Joe Jackson’s ghostly instruction in the movie, Field of Dreams: "If you build it, he will come." In the case of Waterloo Village, we are left to ponder, build what and who will come? So what did Waterloo Village aspire to be? Was it a performing arts’ center? Was it an authentic historic site and heritage tourist destination? Or was it a crafts’ center? And are these several and not entirely compatible outcomes sustainable under a single business model? Such a “tripod” might be an inherently stable support, but only for so long as its three legs remain of equal length. 

Heritage tourism is not static and past success does not necessarily provide a blueprint for the future. Business models must change to accommodate changing demographics and visitor expectations. Looking back, the approaching Bicentennial hugely stimulated interest and attendance at most historical attractions. But it was probably impossible to sustain record audiences indefinitely with the same menu of visitor opportunities. Expectations change with the times. At Colonial Williamsburg, admissions dropped from a high of 1.3 million in 1976 to 1.1 million visitors in 1985 to 730,000 in 2003. Attendance at most cultural attractions also declined after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. After bottoming out in 2004, attendance at Colonial Williamsburg began to rebound, showing a 10% increase by 2008. To overcome operating deficits, however, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation sold some property assets not essential to its core mission, thereby reducing overhead, while revamping its programming.

Famous for bringing the rural folkways of nineteenth-century New England back to life, Old Sturbridge Village is one of the largest living-history museums in the country. In May 1977, Old Sturbridge faced a 25% drop in attendance and rising operating costs (“Old Sturbridge Hopes Summer Will Cut Deficit,” The Hour, Norwalk, Connecticut, May 26, 1977). Overall, visitation dropped 50% between 1976 and 2003. At that time, museums all over the eastern United States suffered declining attendance, which fell from a record high of more than 500,000 in 1976 to 200,000 in 2006. Today, attendance at cultural events and institutions exceeds that at all major sporting events combined.Thus Waterloo’s troubles did not occur in a vacuum. Anyone knowledgeable about the vicissitudes of tourism could have corrected course instead of throwing good money after bad.

Attendance at Old Sturbridge Village continued to slump until a change in management in 2007, when the trend was finally reversed. On May 23, 2011, the Herald News of Fall River, Massachusetts, reported, “Nearly all regional art, science and history museums, botanical gardens and aquariums report modest to strong growth in 2010 with Old Sturbridge Village setting the pace.” Old Sturbridge Village President and CEO James Donahue announced 2010 attendance jumped 12% to 273,752, its third consecutive year of strong growth and highest performance in seven years. Donahue attributed Old Sturbridge Village’s success to providing “varied activities that appeal to children and adults of all ages in gorgeous natural settings at prices that haven’t changed in a decade." In 2010, international visitors to Old Sturbridge Village increased 18% and out-of-state visitors climbed 11% over 2009. Donohue attributed the turn around to a thoughtful and successful reexamination of what Old Sturbridge had to offer, saying, “We’ve taken a hard look at what (the Village) offers and made changes when necessary but kept its core identity. People want real life in real time. We haven’t thrown out the baby with the bath water.” You have to wonder: Did DEP officials “throw out the baby with the bathwater” at Waterloo in 2006?

And heritage destinations were not alone in suffering from declining audiences over that same interval of time. Visitation at Shenandoah National Park, for example, declined 38% from 1.75 million in 1995 to barely a million in 2005 (Karen Finigle, “Inside the Box, National parks lose ground to electronic entertainment,” AMC Outdoors, June 2007). Some tourism experts attributed such decreases to increasing competition for shorter attention spans and less leisure time in a marketplace dominated by more “thrilling” competitors. In 2006, a Nature Conservancy survey showed “a correlation between the decline in visitors and the rise of electronic entertainment media.” Writing in USA Today, Jayne Clark noted, “In an age of Xbox and MTV, traditional living history activities—say, dipping tapers in Ye Olde Candle Shoppe —are less likely to inflame interest than they once did”(Jayne Clark, “Putting life back into living history,” USA TODAY, April 15, 2004).

Describing the drop in visitation at historic sites in the twenty years leading up to 2006 as “part of a national phenomena,” James P. Vaughan, Vice President for Stewardship at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, thought the public, by their absence, was “telling us that the experiences we provide are not very relevant or important to their lives.”(James P. Vaughan, “Historic Houses in the 21st Century, Preserving Historic Houses Today,” a lecture at Christ Church in Philadelphia, PA, on Feb. 1, 2006) To renew and grow their audience, historic site interpreters were encouraged to “spend less time lecturing and more time in guiding visitors to making their own discoveries.” (“The Changing Scene, Farm animals now rule the roost at Old Sturbridge Village,” The Berkshires Week, May 27, 2004). In response to declining attendance and escalating costs, living-history interpreters at Old Sturbridge Village began to “engage visitors in a more personal and interactive process, encouraging them to actively participate.” Old Sturbridge Village attendance escalated from 221,111 in 2007 to 273,752 in 2010.

Governmental agencies always seem slow to respond to changing tastes and market forces. And all the customer service training in the world will not overcome the simple truth that more visitors mean more work. While civil service and other bureaucratic reforms were instituted in the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century to protect against political cronyism—eternally corrosive of effective and efficient administration of the public trust—one has to question whether or not the system has largely failed in its purpose of rewarding merit and insulating governmental functions from arbitrary rewards of favoritism.

And does political dilettantism distort the dispensation of public resources by circumventing inconvenient safeguards intended to sustain competent oversight? I know the answer because I’ve been in the belly of the beast, where I’ve seen the undigested remains of any messenger who dared to point out, “The Emperor has no clothes!” So why did Waterloo Village fail? I would say it was because it was a special case. And, sadly for New Jersey, the lack of professional oversight is hardly an exception to the rule.

Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” He also supposedly defined “insanity” as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Is clueless officialdom again investing precious dollars to sustain extraneous entertainments that do not speak to the history of Waterloo, rather than preserving the historic fabric of the village and re-emphasizing historicity—its greatest selling point as a heritage destination? And maybe, just maybe, considering the misplacement of state historic sites within an environmental protection agency, it was all part of the plan from the very beginning: to start building the Hackettstown Reservoir after 2010! History be dammed!

Ever wonder why New Jersey suffers a perennial identity crisis? Well, we are perhaps unique among the original states in not administering state-owned and-operated historic sites through a professionally capable agency. Consequently we sacrifice a potentially enormous economic boost from heritage tourism that such a rich history should nourish. Even worse, while plowing huge sums of money into our educational infrastructure, we yet deprive our children of important opportunities to experience real history in the storied places where it was made.