Southern Tier Heritage Grant

2/6/2013 (Updated 11:21:21 PM)

The Southern Tier wants a bigger piece of the $5 billion annual heritage tourism pie--and it's hoping to use a path through history to get there. 

A $100,000 state grant for the eight counties in the Southern Tier is for the development of a marketing plan called "a path through history."  It calls for a mobile app that can guide a tourist through the historical sites in the area.

"We have 12 themes that we're focusing on in this particular area and so far just in the beginning we have 80-100 stories we could tell if we had enough money and enough time," said Broome County Historian Gerald Smith.

Smith points to the Southern Tier's history of manufacturing and area authors such as Rod Serling and Mark Twain as part of a rich tradition that could be marketed better.