Which North American Cities Present Themselves Historically?

Help me out here with my next book, a comparative study of some North American cities--but which ones?

I want to write about a book about how cities use their own history to define themselves and to present themselves to visitors and the world at large. My project is partly inspired by Clint Smith's wonderful book How the Word is Passed. Those of you who have read the book (and if you haven't go do so right now), know it is an analysis and travelogue of some of the historic sites of American slavery. Smith visits sites like Monticello, Goree Island, Whitney Plantation, and Angola Prison. The structure is deceptively simple--each chapter is devoted to one site. Smith explains the history of the site using the latest scholarship, he visits the site and writes about that experience, and then he talks with either visitors to the site or the folks who run it. Each chapter is interesting in its own right, and together they are an engaging survey of the current state of the public history of slavery in the United States. 

I had just read the book when I visited Salt Lake City last spring for the National Council on Public History conference. The capitol of Utah and the Mormon Church is a place that takes its history

seriously, with multiple museums and monuments celebrating the history of Mormonism. There is also a counternarrative going on, At a conference reception at the Alta Club, a terrifying portrait of Porter Rockwell greets visitors as they come through the entrance. Rockwell was a colorful figure, often called "Brigham Young's assassin." His crazy eyes stare through the door and at the statue of Brigham Young across the street. The Alta Club was founded largely by the non-Mormon business elite of Salt Lake, and the location of the portrait is a clear dig at the traditional Mormon history of the region.

Porter Rockwell might shoot you.

I should write about this, I thought. 

So here is the idea: A book about how cities use their history. Each chapter is a different city. Each begins with a history of the community, then transitions to a journalistic visit to the place, describing and analyzing the main narrative (or narratives), current controversies, and some conversations with public historians and advocates. As I describe this, it is such an obvious idea that I feel like the book must exist already--but I don't think it does.

So what cities do I analyze? I want to stick to North America, I am a historian of the United States and would be quickly out of my depth tackling London or Kyoto. They have to be cities that think of themselves historically, that present their histories front and center. This rules out most American cities, where history is an afterthought or at best a niche interest. I love the history of my town, Spokane, but no one comes here to explore that history nor is history front and center of how we think of ourselves. And I want some variety in the 8-10 communities. 

Here are the cities are I am thinking of so far:

. 

Salt Lake City, for the reasons above. I have abundant notes on my visits to the museums, historical societies and the state capitol, and I have been doing some background reading and taking notes. I also want to write about a counter-narrative to the LDS history that dominates the landscape, the stories told by the gentiles of Salt Lake City.

Santa Fe is an obvious choice. This one will be fun. The old Spanish colonial town has a fascinating and often raw history. But its presentation of itself as quaint and colonial is an early 20th-century marketing ploy, with "American" style buildings torn down or refaced with faux-colonial adobe. And there are some fun local controversies, like the recent toppling of a statue of a frontier army soldier and other statue controversies. 

Charleston and/or New Orleans as a southern city. Maybe both? Charleston is both the site of Revolutionary War battles and Confederate shrines. There is an ongoing struggle over the city's public history, between Black public historians and old-guard white public historians, beautifully chronicled in Denmark Vesey's Garden. New Orleans of course has an even richer history and history of public history and tourism. I worry about the overlap of doing both--slavery and the Civil War--but there are so many differences perhaps I can write about both. 

Palm Springs offers a different history and public history. A desert resort for Hollywood stars trying to get away from the paparazzi, it is known for its rich collection of midcentury architecture. As I write this I am on my way there for Modernism Week. This will be a fun contrast to the other locations.

Boston has worked hard to claim the legacy of the American Revolution all for itself, ever since Paul Revere got off his horse. There is Seth Bruggerman's Lost on the Freedom Trail. 

Philadelphia has been saying "Oh no you don't the Revolution is ours!" to Boston for the same amount of time. Great preservation stories in Philly. Like Charleston and New Orleans, I worry about too much overlap. 

Washington D.C. might be the final chapter, a city where the public history is at war with itself. We have the staid Smithsonian museums, the African American and American Indian museums, various commercial failures like the late Spy Museum, and of course the January 6th insurrection with its faux-constitutional veneer, which could be a chilling closing to the book.

Reader, what other cities should I consider? I am going to Montreal next month for the National Council on Public History conference and will take a close look. San Francisco is a strong candidate, not just Gold Rush history but the intentional development of Chinatown as a tourist attraction. 

Where else?

The Saga of Branchy and the Problem with Wikipedia

I administer a Facebook group named Spokane History Researchers where folks trade questions and answers about local history. The other day we got an interesting one:

Last spring my wife and I started a new pastime (for us) of exploring tiny towns in the Spokane area. She takes lots of pictures and then writes up a little travelogue to post on Facebook. We always do a little research on the history of the place, and that is usually straightforward.  On our trip to Spangle (documented below) we unearthed a mystery. Wikipedia says the children of the town's founder planted a tree in the center of town and named it "Branchy", and allegedly it is still standing today. Well, naturally we wanted to find Branchy, but there are no signs and it seems nobody in town had even heard of Branchy. So, dear history researchers, does anyone know the history of Spangle?  Does Branchy still exist? If so, how would one find him (it)?

Sure enough, the Wikipedia page for the town of Spangle had a brief history of the town, which was mostly about Branchy:

Reader, allow me to tell you of Spangle, Washington. It is a typical rural town in the Palouse country of eastern Washington. An agricultural village set in a sea of wheat, it has only a couple of businesses and is tiny with a population of 280 souls. 

And yet the history of the town is richer than Wikipedia knows. It once had many more businesses, even a hotel. The Spokane County poor farm was there, and the grounds are now a Seventh-Day Adventist school. It is a pleasant little town. 

Downtown Spangle via Google Street View

Anyway back to Branchy. One of my graduate mentors, Bill Youngs, liked to say that "a historian needs a fool-proof bullshit detector." And the story of Branchy had mine flashing red. One of the great things about Wikipedia is that you can examine the history of each page and see every edit that has ever been made, and who made it. So I dug into the history and found the originator of the story and that it was definitely fake.

The tale of Branchy was added to the Spangle Wikipedia page on June 16, 2022, and did not appear anywhere on the internet before that. The story was added via an anonymous edit from an IP range that has since been banned from editing any Wikipedia articles. There is no Branchy. 

Wikipedia, though, has a long reach. A Google search for the exact phrase "named the tree Branchy" turns up two additional pages with the story, both clearly pulling from Wikipedia.

Anyway, I logged into Wikipedia and deleted the Branchy story, and added a few hurried (but true!) details to the history section:

The rise and fall of Branchy highlights a problem with Wikipedia, particularly small pages with limited traffic. A survey of other small Washington town's Wikipedia pages reveals no obvious fake stories, but the history sections are almost uniformly a few sentences, focused on the founding of the community. 

What we need is a crowdsourcing effort to improve these pages. Who wants to organize it?