On the road again

As spring returns and with it the old urge to get moving, American Heritage once again provides a nationful of fascinating destinations for the historically minded traveler. Among them:

Grand hotels

Surely no form of historic travel can be more seductive than that offered by the survivors of the great age of the American hotel. It dawned in 1829 when Boston’s Tremont House opened its doors, and although the Tremont is long gone, J. M. Fenster hears its echoes in the public spaces of a score of splendid hostelries.

Seattle

It grew in a cacophony of violence and squalor—and promptly became one of the most civilized places on earth. Andrew Ward is one of thousands of settlers beguiled by the city’s charm; he celebrates it with a bracing trace of lingering East Coast skepticism.

Paddling through the past

Anthony Brandt takes his teenage son for a canoeing trip down a little-known stretch of the Delaware River and discovers a long, almost effaced history of human enterprise and entropy.

Plus …

Alone among American battlefields, Gettysburg is patrolled by a cadre of government-licensed guides who are, in fact, highly trained historians … finding the astonishing in a Colorado town that is famous for absolutely nothing … with Faulkner in Mississippi … and, just in case you have the appetite to keep pushing on, more …