Tapestry: New interpretive tours an upgrade of Pilgrimage

Published 12:00 am Sunday, March 1, 2009

In the days before the Internet provided a seemingly endless amount of information on any subject of interest, Betty Bullard said tourists happily paid for simple room-to-room tours and brief historical accounts of Vicksburg’s antebellum and historic homes.

For more  information on Tapestry, click here

“They just don’t go for that anymore,” said Bullard, owner of The George Washington Ball House. “These days you have to give them something more, something they can’t get just anywhere.”

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That’s the concept behind “Tapestry: A Living History of Vicksburg,” a new interpretive tour series that stakeholders such as Bullard are hoping will once more position Vicksburg as a top destination for visits by people who want to know more about lifestyles past. Tapestry mixes the traditional home tours with presentations unique and relevant to each property, including jewelry-making, Civil War surgical practices, a history of the Vicksburg slave trade, the art of making stained glass and more. Collections of fine china, silver, antiques and period tools will also be presented by people dressed in period clothing.

In total, 16 of Vicksburg’s significant homes and properties will host a tour and interpretive presentation once a weekend for four weekends from March 13 through April 6. Free Friday evening concerts at the Old Court House Museum are planned, as well as Saturday evening events at downtown businesses to promote overnight stays in the city. Annabelle owner and Vicksburg Bed & Breakfast Association President Carolyn Stephenson said Tapestry is a big step.

“We knew we had to kick it up aand reinvent what we were doing,” said Stephenson. “There’s one thing we have in Vicksburg that’s never going anywhere, and that’s our history. We’re taking the stories and history we have here and weaving them into the tapestry that is Vicksburg.”

Tapestry is the product of months of discussions among tour home operators and Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Bill Seratt. The discussions began shortly after the stakeholders’ decision in October to ax Pilgrimage, which had offered package tours of groups homes for about 50 years, Bullard said. In short, ticket sales for Pilgrimage dwindled drastically over the years and eventually could not offset the high cost of advertising the two or three week season.

The VCVB is pulling no punches in promoting and branding Tapestry. Seratt said about $25,000 has been spent on designing and printing a 12-page glossy brochure, purchasing advertising in newspapers and magazines across the South and hiring a public relations firm to solicit the event to about 600 news outlets regionally.

“If you’re going to try to build a brand that can grow into a major national product, you can’t do it half way,” said Seratt. “For this to work, it has to be a quality presentation and product all the way.”

Seratt said the VCVB will spend less and less on Tapestry as the years go on. The development of a brochure and the majority of the advertising will be left to the stakeholders as Tapestry evolves, he said. Stephenson said the tour home operators will set aside some of the profits from Tapestry’s inaugural year to defray those costs next year.

The stakeholders and Seratt are hopeful the Tapestry presentations will be unusual enough to draw in locals as well as tourists. Much of the gradual disinterest with Pilgrimage was due to a lack of exclusivity to the experience, said Seratt. Unlike in Natchez, where many of the tour homes are not regularly open to the public, the majority of the homes included in Pilgrimage here were open to tourists year around. While the homes included in Tapestry will remain open for traditional tours, the presentations will only be at one scheduled time a weekend.

“Pilgrimage was just kind of outdated. It was the same thing every year, and it didn’t draw a lot of people,” said Macy Whitney, owner of The Corners. “I think Tapestry is going to grow into something very fun and educational — and something that can be different every year. It’s bigger and better than Pilgrimage ever was because it’s more than just a tour of the homes and it pulls in local businesses and attractions to present Vicksburg in a new way.”

Whitney said she hopes Tapestry can expand to include even more homes, businesses and attractions.

“The possibilities are endless if everybody gets on board with this,” she said. “There’s a lot of venues and homes not included in Tapestry this year that we would like to include next year.”

Stephenson said the events for summer, fall and Christmas are being discussed among the tour home owners.

Tapestry tickets are $10 per home tour and presentation, and can be purchased in groups of two or four at the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum, 1107 Washington St., beginning Friday. The Tapestry brochure provides a rundown of all the events and a map of all the properties on tour, and is available at the VCVB visitors center, the Mississippi Welcome Center and participating tour homes.