A father-daughter team of area natives are working on a book and plan to include a chapter on the Kinzua Bridge. In this vein, a survey link is circulating on social media to help gain insight into local perspective on the changes at the Kinzua Bridge following the 2003 tornado that struck the area.

Katherine Burlingame, who was born in Bradford and is a doctoral student in the Department of Human Geography at Lund University, Sweden, is contributing to a book. When contacted via email, Katherine Burlingame explained, “My research is based in landscape geography and how the experience at heritage sites can be developed in different ways to bring the past to life for visitors. I’ve been working with Viking Age landscapes in Germany and Sweden; however, I also like to have some research connections back home.”

Katherine Burlingame has previously had work printed that focused on the Swedish Festival in Mount Jewett, which was part of another academic book.

This is also where her survey regarding the Kinzua Bridge comes into play. A chapter of the book will focus on the Kinzua Bridge and its transformation from utility to solely tourist appeal following the damage by a tornado in 2003. This chapter will be written with the assistance of Katherine Burlingame’s father, Philip Burlingame, who is from Smethport and who served as associate vice president for Student Affairs before retiring from Penn State University.

“For this book chapter, I was invited to contribute an example of a landscape that had transformed into a heritage landscape over time,” she explained. “In landscape geography, a heritage landscape is often referred to as a ‘heritagescape’ where natural and cultural elements of the landscape are intertwined and the place attracts visitors because of this connection. This is why part of our title is ‘A Heritagescape in the Appalachians,’ and we think the Kinzua Bridge State Park provides an interesting example of a landscape that became a heritagescape when the bridge was damaged by the tornado.”

Katherine Burlingame continued, explaining the fact that a significant amount of the research materials used for the book chapter are public documents and newspaper articles. However, she and her father felt that a survey would help them understand the opinions of both current and former McKean County residents in regard to the redevelopment of the park with the Sky Walk and Visitor Center.

“This will help us understand if there were disparities between how locals have used and valued the park over time and how it was developed for tourism purposes with visitors from outside of McKean County in mind,” Katherine Burlingame said. “Many of us who grew up in the area can remember walking across the bridge when there was no one else there, so a lot has changed since the park was developed more with tourism in mind, predominantly focused on the damaged bridge. We are particularly interested in the different decisions that were made about what to do with the park as well as the extent that local communities from the surrounding area were involved in these decisions.”

The Kinzua Bridge chapter will be one of many, with contributions from scholars covering different landscapes from all around the world.

“The book editor is Giacomo Pettenati, a researcher from the University of Turin in Italy,” Katherine Burlingame said. “The overall goal of the book is to understand the different processes of how landscapes become valued as heritage over time. This is often called the ‘heritagization’ of landscapes where landscapes are valued and placed under different layers of protection (for example, by individuals, groups, or institutions like the National Register of Historic Places), and this can be a very complex and sometimes very contested process with tensions most often arising between locals and outsiders.”

“Since the data from the survey is only being used to add more depth to our arguments, we have chosen a few McKean County Facebook groups, so we do not expect to receive a large number of responses. We have already had over 150 people respond in one day, however, which was a big surprise, and it shows the strong sense of identity and connection local communities have with the park.”

Burlingame explained they only intend to keep the survey open until May 5 and expect that the book will be published sometime in the fall.

The survey can be accessed at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc11O_gg8IjAe3iJk_is1nzSpsmLXpguVFEi0cwy1-sOgFBUA/viewform

The link is also available in a post to the Facebook page of “I Grew up in Bradford, PA.”