A week ago while at RDI's Eugene office I recieved a stuffed manila envelope with the firm instructions "Do not Open This." I was the lucky recipient of a stack of the new Central Cascades Geotourism maps. I finally opened my maps this Tuesday, the official release date and the same day that the website that accompanies the map went live. Here are a few reasons why I am so excited about this project:

1. It's a rural project with genuine community input. Two of my coworkers, Laurel MacMillan and Sarah Worl, held 25 community forums in "central cascade" communities of 5,000 people or less. At these forums, attendees nominated sites for the maps, discussed what places in their communities are "sacred" (as in locals only), and started a bigger conversation about how geotourism can be a tool for both preservation and economic growth. 

2. It's a map, and I am really into maps, especially ones that ask PEOPLE to pinpoint the important stuff. I love asset maps, mind maps, and of course bike maps. Maps help us not only find our way around, they are a visual explanation of what we have. There's a great story on public radio's, This American Life about the creative map makers. In the past, I've written about the importance of maps in combatting the digital divide (also discussed on "On The Media").

3. The project was a collaboration. Rural Development Initiatives, National Geographic, Travel Oregon, Washington State Tourism, Sustainable Travel International, Sustainable Northwest, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management were all involved with this project. That's a public/private, bistate collaboration, and anyone who has worked collaboratively knows how difficult it is to pull off such a thing.

4. The last reason why I am such a fan of this project is that it represents some of the great work Travel Oregon is doing with web. By creating  web-based products as part of various tourism initiatives, Travel Oregon is creating an infrastructure and information storage/display system that is far more flexible than traditional printed media and maps. They can collect, display, and provide greater access to information connected to their programs. It also allows us to interact with their content, and allows them to continually adjust their content so that it stays current and relevant for us. Here are some other nifty online tourism projects: Oregon Bounty, The People's Coast, Ride Oregon.

Mt. Hood Summit/Photo by Peter Marbach, Courtesy of thecentralcascades.com

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