Driving trails connect visitors with Civil War

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Creating a system of driving trails to bring historic Missouri Civil War sites to life might sound like a lofty goal, but the president of Missouri's Civil War Heritage Foundation said it's not that groundbreaking.

Really.

"We're not inventing the wheel here," Greg Wolk said. "It surprises me no one tried to do a Jesse James trail yet."

The first four stops on the Gray Ghosts Trail, which highlights places significant to Missouri's Civil War heritage, were christened in May. Each spot is marked with an interpretive panel that offers information about the significant Civil War events in the area. The panels are in Centralia, detailing the 1864 massacre and battle there; in Kingdom City, telling the story of how the town was named; and in Danville, where two sites commemorate the Danville Female Academy and the entire Boonslick region.

The Gray Ghosts Trail represents the first of several trails the foundation would like to complete, including one that would follow the path of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1861 trek through the state.

Wolk said he and the organization hope to have the Gray Ghosts Trail, which will run from Danville to Liberty, established by 2011, the Civil War's sesquicentennial.

"We'll be multiplying the sites that people have to see, and that's really the good that this does," Wolk said. "We're finding within the last 20 years or so, in the Deep South, they are seeing the value of tourism. Some of the remaining scars, I think, are healing over finally there."

Third-most Civil War battles

Behind Virginia and Tennessee, Missouri had the third-most Civil War battles of any state involved in the war. Lorah Steiner, director of the Columbia Convention and Visitors Bureau, said it's time for Missouri to embrace its role in the conflict and capitalize on untapped tourism resources. The bureau donated $5,000 for the Gray Ghosts Trail.

"It will be much bigger in terms of tourism than what Lewis and Clark was," she said about the trail. "Missouri is steeped in Civil War history."

Steiner said she has seen droves of Civil War buffs come to the bureau's office asking about sites.

"They are tenacious," she said. "They will go stand in a field and be happy."

And when enthusiasts come, they bring spending money.

The Virginia Tourism Corp. reported that 10.4 percent of the state's 54.8 million visitors in 2005 indicated they experienced some sort of Civil War site. As a whole, Virginia guests spent $16.8 billion that year.

Richard Lewis, a spokesman for the corporation, said Civil War tourists are unlike others.

"That person tends to spend more money per person than the average traveler," he said. He added that they also tend to travel in larger parties.

Jack Chance is one of those people happy to stand in an empty field.

Chance is a director of the Missouri Civil War Heritage Foundation and the president of the Friends of Centralia Battlefield. He soon will oversee his group's acceptance of the donation of the historic field where 81 Union soldiers and three guerrillas lost their lives in 1864. Tribune Managing Editor Jim Robertson also serves on the boards of the heritage foundation and Friends of Centralia Battlefield.

"I think we have a real resource here in Centralia for recreation and tourism," Chance said. "We're trying to educate the people and, at the same time, give them some recreation."

One reason Chance and others believe Missouri has been slow to embrace its Civil War heritage is the state's split during the conflict. For the 1863 siege of Vicksburg, Miss., Missouri provided 39 regiments: 17 Confederate and 22 Union.

"To me, that's one of the reasons why it's important," Chance said. "Our conflict was deeper-seated."

Lori Simms, a special markets manager with the Missouri Division of Tourism, said the split between Missourians was one cause of the war. Although the war began in 1861, fighting in Missouri began seven years earlier, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed those two future states to choose whether they would be free or slave territories. Missouri representatives from both sides made vicious runs on Kansas to coerce residents into choosing the attacker's side.

"If South Carolina was the powder keg, we were the match," she said. "We truly were the state that had neighbor against neighbor, literally. Missouri was pretty pivotal. People just don't realize it."

Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Mo., said he wants people to start recognizing the state's history, and he thinks the Gray Ghosts Trail will help make that happen. Hulshof was the guest of honor at the dedication of the interpretive panel for the Danville Female Academy, a building "Bloody" Bill Anderson, the leader of the guerrillas involved in the Centralia battle, tried to destroy in October 1864.

Hulshof said he drove by the building a handful of times but never knew its legacy.

"It's just a white boarded-siding building," he said. "Unless you knew the history, it's boarded up."

The state's lack of promotion as a Civil War tourism destination is a result of Missourians not recognizing the past while hurtling toward the future, Hulshof said.

"I think one reason we haven't capitalized is because buildings like that in the past have been razed," he said. "They have been torn down in the name of progress."

There is no set number of stops on the Gray Ghosts Trail. As foundation members stump for donations to fund the interpretation panels -- which each cost $1,800 before tax credits -- Wolk said he hoped word-of-mouth would prompt other towns to tell them about overlooked sites.

"It's going to be a grass-roots, local kind of thing," Wolk said. "The trail can go wherever local people decide."

The trail exists to bring communities together while remembering a conflict that tore the state apart, Hulshof said.

"This is an effort to link those towns together because their history was very much intertwined in the days of the Civil War," he said. "It may continue to be a work in progress."