The Wheeling National Heritage Area

This article examines the Wheeling National Heritage Area (WNHA). The WNHA needed to generate money while interpreting its troubling past. Scholarship on heritage areas suggested that economic concerns would blunt the WNHA’s ability to address difficult history. With some notable exceptions, however, the WNHA engaged with and addressed the area’s uncomfortable past, from the legacy of enslavement to problematic portrayals of Indigenous peoples and beyond. Moreover, while the unique format of the heritage area brought some challenges, it mostly enhanced the WNHA’s efforts to address difficult history.