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PrintHistory Lives
Innovative programming at First State Heritage Park makes learning fascinating and fun.
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Teenager Chip Welch has a new interest in his middle school history class.
The 13-year-old credits a riveting performance in Dover for this. Costumed actors—including Chip’s English teacher—reenacted the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in a play called “Fully, Freely, Entirely.”
The play is one of the programs at Dover’s First State Heritage Park—which really isn’t a park at all, but a collection of historical buildings and museums. The park includes the Biggs Museum of American Art, Legislative Hall, the Old State House and the Johnson Victrola Museum. Park officials like to call it an “urban park without boundaries.”
Last year, the park hosted more than 28,000 visitors. Park officials are now moving into the realm of historical theater and plays like the one Welch saw, says Elaine Brenchley, project director for First State Heritage Park.
(The teenager says he learned that the founding fathers had to be careful not to “break apart the nation.” One mistake could “turn a democracy into dictatorship.” )
The park also offers lantern tours of church cemeteries, when visitors encounter half a dozen characters from the 18th century. In one such tour, Revolutionary War hero Colonel John Haslet appears in period clothing as visitors pass his tomb.
Dark Dover takes visitors on an evening tour to hear chilling true murder tales and encounter the ghosts of Colonials on the Dover Green.
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