Try this tour: Minnesota's Dakota War

While the Civil War sesquicentennial gets a ton of attention (and a bunch of great tours) this year, here in Minnesota we're also marking the 150th anniversary of the U.S.-Dakota War -- a conflict that led to the largest mass-execution in U.S. history. The war took place across a broad swath of the Minnesota River valley in the summer of 1862 and evidence of it has mostly disappeared.

U.S.-Dakota War audio tour stops along Minnesota River
Valley Scenic Byway.  (from MNHS)

The Minnesota Historical Society just launched a cell phone tour that brings the stories of the war and the tumultuous years around it to life in places all over the valley -- like St. Peter, New Ulm, the Lower Sioux Agency and Montevideo. It's a good example of an effective scenic byway tour -- letting a story unfold as the miles pass by -- and I'm excited to drive a big chunk of the route next weekend. I'll post a review when I'm done, but I can already tell that MNHS makes wide use of their extensive oral history collection. Placecasting is an excellent way to unlock the unique insight of those dusty old tapes.

In the meantime, here's the map. The brochure (.pdf link) that accompanies it is also a good thumbnail overview of the war. No map is really necessary though: call 1-888-601-3013 to sample the tour. Use #01 for the overview.

A Mansion, a Museum and Music

Some placecasts I've seen in the news recently:

The Vanderbilt Breakers Mansion

• A Seattle Post Intelligencer blogger mentions the audio tour of the famous Breakers Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island this week. A two hour tour sounds too long to me in an old house, but there are 20 bathrooms to get through. The tour sounds like much more than narration. It includes sound effects (which can be a great touch or profoundly cheesy) and oral histories from people who lived at the mansion. The audio producer's description of the tour is actually a great read and includes these details:

"'The push for audio tours grew out of an effort “to become more relevant and engaging for our visitors and to move away from a specifically fact-based guided tour,” said John Tschirch, the preservation society’s architectural historian and director of academic programs....The recording includes narration, sound effects, commentary from architectural experts and past servants, and readings of memoirs of Vanderbilt family members...'You entered the house as a Vanderbilt or guest, now you entering the dining room as a servant' is the new approach of the audio tour, which relies on hallways used by servants that weren’t open for guided tours."

(Speaking of Rhode Island, here's a great short audio story from NPR on Friday about R.I.'s famous weenies. I wonder if the Vanderbilts served these at garden parties...)

• A National Geographic exhibit currently at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia is using the voice of Cleopatra to narrate an audio tour if it's exhibit all about...Cleopatra. According to a story in Philly.com: "After a five-minute video introduction, an audio tour delivered as if the queen herself were speaking, fills visitors in on the details of her life." Yikes. The writing and voicing had better be exceptional to pull this sort of thing off. But the audio tour sounds old-school compared to the other features of this high-tech exhibit: "The exhibit includes high definition multimedia, original soundscapes and a mobile-based social media scavenger hunt." National Geographic knows a lot about education and interpretation, so I'm very curious to hear how this exhibit is received.
• The award-winning Toronto Music Garden is packed with music and dance from now through September. The outdoor garden and performance space is, literally, inspired by Bach (for example, the "Prelude" is a "An undulating river scape with curves & bends", followed by the "Allemand", "A forest grove of wandering trails"...etc.) In a $6 70-minute audio tour now available near the park, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and landscape architect Moir Messervy explain how they turned music into a park. This concept is so well tailored for placecasting that I'd be disappointed if such a tour wasn't available. (via Music Industry Mews Network)
  

  

  Toronto Music Garden (via City of Toronto)

It's ready! Northstar rail audio tour

My audio tour of Minnesota's new Northstar Commuter Rail Line is ready to go. The service has been running for five days and now riders can learn a bit about the towns and cities along the way. This tour talks about some of the buildings along the route (like Minnesota's first car factory and its first nuclear power plant) and about the history of the corridor, which Canadian fur traders were traveling in oxcarts 190 years ago.

Download the audio tour here. (.mp3 file, 9.8mb...right-click to download)
Here's an enhanced iTunes version with chapters if you have an iPod. (left-click to go to iTunes)

This audio file is meant to be used on the train, starting at Target Field in Minneapolis. It's one 20 minute file, broken into 5 chapters...one for each station. At the end of each chapter, it asks listeners to pause the audio until they leave the next station. There's about 20 minutes of information in all for the 51 minute trip.

I hope to create a second podcast for the inbound trip, but at the moment none of those morning trips happens during daylight hours.

If you listen to this podcast, I would LOVE to hear feedback. There's a lot more I want to do with this tape (add interviews and natural sound), and I want to know what you'd like to hear in the next version.

Placecasting battlefields

At it's most basic, I describe placecasting to people as having your own personal park ranger whispering in your ear as you walk around a place.

I found the most literal application of that description so far when I started previewing the audio tour podcasts at CivilWarTraveler.com.  This company has partnered with the National Park Service at Gettysburg, Harpers Ferry, Antietam, Appomattox Court House and other sites in and near Virginia to make audio tours of certain important parts of the vast battlefields (think the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg or the Burnside Bridge at Antietam).


The free podcasts on this site feature on-site recordings of real rangers and historians talking about the very spot where you are standing.  They point out features if the land around you, and off in the distance.  They describe how the battle progressed around this point and then they tell you (roughly) how to get to the next tour stop.  A printable map is available -- and essential -- for each tour.    


I love that these are real rangers steeped in the history of the place, and I really love the way they point out the physical features around you.  The ranger at Gettysburg's Peach orchard talks about this peach trees the National Park Service just planted there, and then he directs your eyes to the important Little Round Top hill off in the distance.  If you visited here and only had interpretive signs to read, you would miss so much. 

Civil War buffs will love these podcasts for the specific value they add to each location they cover.  People NOT already into battle history, however, could have a hard time listening to a whole tour (they range from 20 to 60 minutes, though most run about half an hour).  This is because compelling storytelling is not necessarily the strength of rangers and historians.  In the couple of tours I previewed, the tour guides throw a LOT of facts about distances, geography, casualties and regiment numbers at the listener without necessarily couching them in an immersive narrative about how the battle progressed.  But being live and off-the-cuff helps keep the energy up (as opposed to scripted podcasts read in a studio).


The audio production is also only so-so.  They're recorded outdoors on-site, where wind noise is always a problem.  Some of the tour guides also pop a lot of p's as they talk into the microphone.  Both of these things can be hard on listeners after a while, especially when listening in headphones.  The rangers also sometimes gloss right past the instructions for getting to the next location, so the printed map is a must. 

Next week marks the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862), and there will be a lot of rangers, historians and other interpreters on the battlefield.  There's no substitute for that kind of personal contact.  But if you have to walk the hallowed ground on your own, these are some of the most effective place-centered audio tours I have found yet.  

(Photos from National Park Service)

New audio tour at Ellis Island

One of the best audio tours I ever took was at Ellis Island. It was full of music, interpretation and oral histories. It made the mostly-empty rooms of this amazing site come alive.

I think it was narrated by Tom Brokaw, who could make a dictionary sound interesting...but I'm pretty sure the writing was solid, too.  I recall spending so much time listening to the audio "extras" included on the device that I nearly missed the boat back to NYC.

That was in 2000. I see now that they've just updated the tour. I wonder if it's as good as I remember it.

Shared via AddThis

Fort Vancouver audio tour

Here's one you won't find on-line, even if you try.

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, in Vancouver, Washington features a recreated 1860s fur trading post on the banks of the Columbia River.  They created a very good audio tour of the post buildings a few years ago -- before everyone had an iPod.  So you have to check out a little audio player as you enter the post.  The site's Web site has some podcasts created by its ambitious chief  ranger, but the audio tour isn't available for download.  

The full tour takes about an hour and it introduces us to the buildings on the fort site by telling the stories of the people who used them.  The fort commander's big white house is brought to life by telling the story of the officers' dinners he would host in the main dining room (and of the intimate lunches his wife hosted elsewhere in the house).  

Each stop on the tour is a couple minutes long, and some stops give you the option to hear more information about a particular subject by keying in a number on the device.  Otherwise, it tells you where to walk next and when next to hit the "play" button.

The narrator is excellent and the script is obviously written for the ear.  It uses place well, often beginning with a statement like "Notice the expensive china on the table..." to focus your attention on one detail and then it broadens the narrative to make a larger point (in this case, it used the china to explain why certain luxuries were important to the people, even this far out on the frontier).  The tour goes through the main buildings on the fort and talks a bit about modern-day archeology.  It uses music and sound effects to good effect without going too far overboard.

I especially like the point as I walked between two buildings where the tour guide asks, "How many logs do you think make up the fort wall?"  It acknowledged where I was and gave me a chance to look up and consider the scene in front of me in a way I wouldn't have otherwise.

When I visited, it was late on a weekday afternoon and there were very few visitors rangers around to interpret the site.  So the tour was a huge help in understanding the hidden meanings behind the sights I was seeing.

In many ways the dedicated player is better than an iPod because it pauses automatically after each track and has an easy interface for getting more information.  You don't want to spend too much of an audio tour explaining button-pushes and logistics.  This device was well-suited to its content...and vice versa.   Still, I wish it was available for download so people could come prepared...or listen to tour stops they missed after they leave.


There's more to this site than just the Hudson Bay Company fur trading fort, so plan on a few hours if you're visiting this neat park.