Editorial: Siena Center for battlefield a great idea

Last month Saratoga battlefield lost its very able superintendent, Frank Dean, when he was named chief of the National Park Service’s Centennial Planning Office. But it has just gained a very valuable partner in Siena College, which plans to create a satellite office near the battlefield and establish a Center for Revolutionary Era Studies there.

The battlefield is a mythical, magical place. Like other tourist sites, it has a well-designed orientation center, signage and tour route. But what really makes it special is an unspoiled landscape that allows a visitor to feel, viscerally and perhaps even spiritually, what went on in the fall of 1777, when the colonists defeated the British and turned the tide in the Revolutionary War.

The trouble is, there aren’t enough visitors to do the place justice, or to have a major impact on the local economy. Only about 250,000 people come each year, compared to the 2 million that flock to Gettysburg. The battles are similar in importance, and both battlefields inspire the same strong feelings. Saratoga should be able to draw more visitors. And it could with the new Siena center, which is modeled after Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute, the only existing program of this kind.

The center will also play a major role in the new Saratoga-Washington on the Hudson Partnership, a promising initiative conceived by Assemblyman Roy McDonald to preserve open space while revitalizing the economy of communities along that stretch of the Hudson River. Tourism is a key element in that plan, with the visitors attracted by the region’s many historic and scenic assets. Of those, none is as historic as the battlefield.

The open space part of the plan is also crucial, especially with the prospect of the AMD plant and other development coming to Luther Forest, just southwest of the battlefield. It’s not enough to save the battlefield if the area around it and the view from it, which extends to the Hudson River and beyond, are spoiled.

By teaching people to appreciate and respect the battlefield; by using it as a living laboratory; and by locating in an old building, the former Schuylerville High School, rather than looking for something new in a greenfield, the Siena center can show the way.