Preserve Our Preservations

Mayor Steve Reed should be praised for his innovative foresights in creating museums. Museums create excellent opportunities combining educational outreach, historical preservation, and tourism for enhancing economic development. It saddens me to see so much criticism of ideas that, instead, deserve great praise.
We are allowing too much of our historical past to waste away without proper attention. The Civil War Museum does an excellent job of preserving a critical part of history for this and future generations. Further, it encourages Gettysburg visitors and Hersheypark fans to add Harrisburg to their list of destinations. Opening this museum was a very smart move. Building additional museums will open more educational opportunities to all ages, but in particular our young, and will keeping tourists in Harrisburg longer while broadening their horizons in learning.
While it may be easy to be critical of museums, we instead should be praising those with the courage and innovation to create and build museums. The dialogue should more properly be where on the lists of priorities museums belong, not that they shouldn’t be on the list at all.