However, here's a Nevada paper accusing a local business of promoting fake history for tourism purposes - whistleblowing, as it were. (The history involves claims of a visit by U.S. Grant).
It's a startling thing to see - the civic version of antigravity.
We see mythologizing systematized in the program Pennsylvania is using to build its "Pennsylvania Civil War Trails: Prelude to Gettysburg," for 2006 [emphasis added]:
At each gateway, the local chamber of commerce and historians were charged by the state with identifying two Civil War stories each for four categories: battlegrounds and troop movements, daily life, experiences of women and children and African American contributions to Pennsylvania's defense.This is like an instant history kit - just add tourists. There is no historic sensibility at work here, nor are the people much focused on what story would bring the eternally self-guided ACW tourist to any destination.
"Get me eight stories, on the double."
This is a recipe for fakelore, the stench of which hangs heavy over children's literature.
I picture the local tour guides saying, "And now, I'd like to tell you a precious local story that has been handed down from one generation of chamber of commerce members to the next."
It's like this line from a Woody Allen movie; he owns a cookie bakery and is giving a tour. He stops in front of tubes and sprayers and says, "You know that wonderful smell you get from the oven when you bake fresh cookies? Here's where we apply the chemicals to create that smell for our product."
My advice to Pennsylvania: build a Paul Bunyan village instead. Or strew airplane parts around and claim a crash happened - you can then move the crash from town to town, as economic necessity dictates.
Leave the Civil War alone.
