{"id":71450,"date":"2016-12-14T22:19:52","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T05:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mesa-verde-country-gets-grant-for-podcast-tour-guides\/"},"modified":"2016-12-15T05:19:52","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T05:19:52","slug":"mesa-verde-country-gets-grant-for-podcast-tour-guides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mesa-verde-country-gets-grant-for-podcast-tour-guides\/","title":{"rendered":"Mesa Verde Country gets grant for podcast tour guides"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Hovenweep
Hovenweep National Park has unique towers not seen at other sites in the area.<\/span>The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Thanks to a grant from the Colorado Tourism Office, visitors to Montezuma County may get a podcast tour guide when they explore archaeological sites next year.<\/p>\n

The Mesa Verde Country Visitor Information Bureau received $25,000 through a marketing matching grant program on Dec. 8. Kelly Kirkpatrick, director of tourism, plans to use the money to create podcasts that help visitors learn about the area\u2019s rich archaeological history.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s calling her project a \u201cTrail of the Ancients audio driving tour.\u201d It will consist of up to four hourlong podcasts that guide tourists through archaeological landmarks like Mesa Verde and Hovenweep while providing information from Native and Western perspectives about the ancient dwellings. The podcast tours will cover a loop including Sand Canyon, Hovenweep, Lowry and other historical sites, as well as Mesa Verde National Park. They will be available for download on the Mesa Verde Country website.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople tend to go to Mesa Verde, and they spend a day, and then they move on in their road trip,\u201d Kirkpatrick said. \u201cIf we can encourage them to stay longer by understanding all the other resources and attractions that we have available, we could get them to stay two or three days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The matching market grant was one of about 30 given to not-for-profit and governmental organizations across Colorado. It was the first such grant for Mesa Verde Country, although Kirkpatrick applied for one last year to help with centennial events.<\/p>\n

According to a news release, the state tourism office gave $600,000 in grant money this year, about $100,000 more than last year, through a grant program that was created \u201cfor the purpose of promoting the state or a region as a tourism destination.\u201d Mesa Verde is already a tourist destination \u2013 it reported a record 593,000 visits this year \u2013 but other ruins, museums and archaeological sites are overlooked.<\/p>\n

Guided tours, though, are scarce, and most of Montezuma County\u2019s historical landmarks also have no Wi-Fi or cell phone service, which makes it hard for visitors to find information. Kirkpatrick hopes that the podcast guides, which can be downloaded before visitors arrive, will attract new tourists and enhance their visit.<\/p>\n

In keeping with the purpose of the tourism grant, she hopes the Trail of the Ancients tour will reach a national, and even international, audience. Kirkpatrick hopes to make them available on the Mesa Verde Country website<\/a> by the end of May.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a historic and cultural destination, and we\u2019re really very unique in the state of Colorado for that reason,\u201d Kirkpatrick said. \u201cEveryone has history, but ours is really ancient history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

fund an audio driving tour of landmarks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,173,810],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-71450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mesa-verde-national-park","tag-tourism-recreation"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71450"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=71450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}