HERITAGE TOURISM CLASSIFICATION STUDY
(Fully Developed Heritage Tourism Site)

Description
Mystic Seaport is a maritime museum, educational institution, historic village and shipyard located in Mystic, Connecticut, with origins in the mid-1700s. Situated on the Mystic River, Mystic Seaport is approximately halfway between New York City and Boston. Other key attractions in the area are the Mystic Marine Life Aquarium and the Foxwoods Resort Casino.

Mission
The mission of Mystic Seaport is to provide informal and formal education, historic preservation, research, maritime education, sailing and related nautical skills, publications, art and videos.

Cultural Setting and Context
The Mystic community was settled in the mid-1700s and by the mid-1800s was a significant shipbuilding center. Two boatyards were operated on the present museum site. As shipbuilding waned in the 1880s, textile mills and other manufacturing operations moved into the shipyard. Originally, the 17-acre Museum site contained a few shipyard and mill buildings and only one row of houses along Greenmanville Avenue. Three of these original dwellings are owned by the Museum and are used as administrative buildings. The Museum is on the outskirts of the town of Mystic and is surrounded on the south and east by historic homes and neighborhoods.

History
In 1929, three Mystic residents founded the Marine Historical Association to preserve examples of New England's maritime heritage. It acquired its first historic vessel in 1931. By the 1970s most of the Museum's infrastructure was in place and was renamed Mystic Seaport in 1978.

Heritage Resources
Mystic Seaport has 60 historic buildings and a village displaying exhibits of historical artifacts. It has more than 300 examples of old watercraft, the largest collection in the country. This collection includes two fully-rigged Tall Ships (the 1841 whaler, the Charles W. Morgan, and the 1821 iron-hulled Joseph Conrad) and several other important ship resources.

How Visitors Interact with Resources
The museum houses traditional gallery exhibits and a planetarium with shows about navigation and stars. The Seaport Village is a an open-air museum which uses interpreters and role-players to demonstrate commerce of the 1800s. The historic businesses include a blacksmith shop, a nautical instrument shop, a ship chandlery and sail loft, a cooperage, a drugstore, a tavern and the Mystic Press to name a few. The Henry B. DuPont Preservation Shipyard is a working facility, in which boats are built and repaired using traditional tools and techniques.

Mystic Seaport has over 160 special activities and 17 major events annually. Programs include: tours, workshops, classes, symposia, school vacation programs, clam bakes, maritime studies, youth day camps, special youth overnight and weekend events, sail education, teen and adult schooner training, the Taste of History Festival, the Sea Music Festival, and the Antique Boat Rendezvous.

The G.W. Blunt White Library, part of Mystic Seaport, is open to the public and contains 50,000 books and periodicals, 500,000 library pieces, 25,000 manuscripts, 6,000 charts and maps, and 300 sound recordings associated with maritime history.

The Mystic Maritime Gallery sells art and photographs with a nautical theme. Other commercial operations include Mystic Museum Stores, The Galley Restaurant, the Maritime Bookstore, and the Seamen's Inn Restaurant.

Visitor Experiences
Experiences at Mystic Seaport are many for visitors. The major facilitated experiences for visitors are intellectual and emotional in nature. The interpretation for casual visitors is meant to lead to discovery and learning. The emotional experiences center around fun for visitors. The maritime aspect has many built-in romantic qualities to it, and therefore will lead to inspirational/spiritual experiences for many visitors. This is a by-product, not a planned experience for people.

Benefits
Maritime museums are among the most costly endeavors to undertake. The maintenance costs are incredibly high for any historic resource associated with the water. It is therefore imperative that the hosts and the resources benefit from the visitor's experience in addition to the visitors. Through entrance fees, gift shop sales and special event programming, the site generates needed revenue to sustain the operations. The site also gets needed volunteers for its ongoing and special event programming which greatly helps defray costs.

Lessons to be Learned
The many aspects of Mystic Seaport can be taken in microcosm by a historic site, community or region to become a more complete heritage tourism destination. From special programming to customizing experiences for visitors based on the amount of time they have available to them, Mystic Seaport does many things well. The variety of innovative Visitor Interactive Mechanisms is astounding. They range from purchasing old-fashioned soft drinks and ice cream from street vendors in period costumes in the summer, to living history tours during the Christmas season where visitors join in delivering holiday greetings through town at night. There is something magical about being inside an historic sailing ship on a cold winter's night, in a snug cabin warmed by a small metal stove, listening as a sailor's letter to his family is read by lamplight. These and dozens of other innovative VIMs truly make Mystic Seaport come alive!

Visitor and Financial Information
During fiscal year 1995, Mystic Seaport generated $4.6 million in revenue from 383,000 visitors. Mystic Seaport has conducted a demographic profile of their visitors to use in marketing and management. Key demographic visitor information includes: a median household income of $57,500; a median age of 36.5 years; 67% of visitors who are non-residents; and 77% who are college educated.

Partnerships
Mystic Seaport and Williams College offer a Maritime Studies program focusing on undergraduate courses in literature of the sea, maritime policy, maritime history, oceanography, and marine ecology. Each year, 22 students from around the country spend a semester at the seaport as part of an educational travel program. The Kodak Corporation also sponsors an annual weekend program for amateur photographers.

Mystic Seaport has developed a strong theme though all its activities, products, and services from the museum, to a historic village, commerce, art, and nautical programs and activities. This theme adds to its ability to draw visitors from a wide geographic area and to generate support for nautical heritage resources.

Mystic Seaport also adds to local culture and generates wide interest from across the nation by integrating education, shipbuilding, sailing classes, and other program activities into a broad-based heritage program.

Contact
Mystic Seaport
P.O. Box 6000
Mystic, Connecticut 06355-0990
(860) 572-0711
Website: http://www.mysticseaport.org

Prepared by Jerry Wylie
United States Forest Service
Ogden, Utah (801) 625-5172