National Heritage Areas: the good, the bad & the ugly

I must admit that when Dana Darlington came into "The Mountaineer" asking if we had heard anything about National Heritage Areas, I had not. Darlington went on to say that there is a group of mostly Great Falls people that want to make all of Chouteau County, all of Cascade, part of Fergus County and some of Lewis and Clark County into a National Heritage area.

"The idea of a National Heritage area comes across as good at first," said Darlington. The idea is to promote tourism. The problem is that after these areas get up and running, the National Park Service takes over the running of the are...