December 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 48

Heritage
Interpretation
Enriches the Park Experience
How managers
deploy thematic
interpretation
techniques to
achieve park goals
By Jon Kohl

he city of McAllen, Texas, owns a historic 25-acre adobe mansion with wooded gardens,
called Quinta Mazatlán. It hosts weddings, conferences, dignitaries and art exhibits, and
would hardly seem a place sorely in need of heritage interpretation. But, this doorway
to the city also opens to eight other city, state and national sites scattered across the Rio
Grande Valley that compose the World Birding Center (WBC). Despite that its members channel
migratory bird species back and forth between the neotropics and North America right through
South Texas's backyard, WBC has trouble channeling humans from city to back country.
So, what could Quinta Mazatlán Director
Colleen Hook do to motivate her school children, wedding attendees and art exhibit goers to
journey from the Spanish revival-style interior
featuring bird carvings to watching real birds at
more remote locations? How might interpretation contribute to that human migration?

PHOTO CO

URTESY OF
QUIN

TA MAZATLÁ

Identifying the Missing Piece

Quinta Mazatlán in McAllen,
Texas, erected a series of
interpretive signs in its gardens.
46

Parks & Recreation

Quinta Mazatlán's challenge echoes throughout American parks: how to involve diverse visitors in meeting park objectives. Parks often
use the visitor experience to
leverage their involvement.
After all, if visitors enjoy a
great experience, shouldn't
they want to help places
where they enjoy them?
To improve experiences
and entice visitors to help
parks through environmentally friendly behavior,
donations, purchases and
word-of-mouth advertising,

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parks often manage three factors underlying those
experiences: (1) heritage attractions or place; (2)
activities to interact with the place and (3) services
that support that interaction, such as hikes, clean
bathrooms and well-groomed playgrounds.
Yet, that formula lacks one critical factor that
traces back thousands of years, when humans
evolved the ability to create meaningful stories
needed to coordinate action in the face of threats.
Hunting megafauna or navigating changing climate did not emerge from instinct, rather from
their meaning-making in order to understand
their environment and share that meaning with
clan-mates. That psychological imperative to encode meaning in stories (i.e., meaning-making)
remains inherent in us all from birth to death.
When we understand in new ways, emotion
can motivate us to act in new ways. Dr. Sam
Ham, University of Idaho emeritus professor
and principal communications researcher behind heritage interpretation, says, " We can
only save what we care deeply about. Love is a
powerful motivator. " It is not enough to take a
nature walk with a ranger who spouts information. Rather, that individual should guide visi-

December 2020 - Parks & Recreation

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