Calumet National Heritage Area Feasibility Study

Calumet National Heritage Area Feasibility Study

The Calumet Heritage Partnership is pleased to present the April 2018 revised version of the Feasibility Study for the Calumet National Heritage Area. The document includes revisions made based on suggestions from the National Park Service as well as a summary of public comments received on the draft study, a response to the comments, and 79 letters of support.

Download and Read the Feasibility Study (PDF 36 MB)

Current List of Letters of Support Received (April 2018)

What is a National Heritage Area?
For information on what a heritage area is, please check out our brochure A Calumet Heritage Area: Questions and Answers and browse the resources on our Calumet National Heritage Area Initiative page including a copy of the full Resource inventory Working Database.

Why do a Feasibility Study?
The study answers the National Park Service’s big questions: does a proposed National Heritage Area tell a nationally significant story? does it have the capacity to be considered feasible?

The study says “yes” and “yes” to those questions. 

What does the study contain?
There are five chapters of text, photographs, tables, maps, and appendices to make the case. Part of the case is made by demonstrating that there are important regional resources that exist to tell the nationally significant story. This Resource Inventory contains 228 separate key resource entries, and should in itself, be a helpful contribution to the people of the region.

  • Chapter 1 introduces the study.
  • Chapter 2 makes the case for the National Significance of the Calumet Region and justification for its designation
  • Chapter 3 shows how the region’s natural and human history supports that case.
  • Chapter 4 discusses the administrative and operational feasibility of a National Heritage Area.
  • Chapter 5 lists the specific criteria set by the National Park Service that National Heritage Areas need to meet and summarizes how each of these conditions is met in the Calumet region.

Ten appendices contain important background material including 79 letters of support. 

The drafts of the feasibility study which preceded the final study are archived here:

Calumet National Heritage Area Feasibility Study Draft January 2017 (PDF 26MB)

Calumet National Heritage Area Feasibility Study July 2017 (PDF 52MB)