The Camden County Historical Society has won a 2019 Grand Jury Award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia for the Camden County Heritage Tourism Plan. This award will be presented at the 2019 Preservation Achievement Awards ceremony on June 5 in Philadelphia.
Each year the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia presents the Preservation Achievement Awards to a select group of individuals, organizations and businesses for projects from throughout the region which exemplify outstanding achievement in the field of historic preservation. The awards honor projects involving the preservation or protection of historic resources including the restoration, rehabilitation and/or adaptive reuse of historic properties; sympathetic new additions to historic buildings; or education, documentation and advocacy work on behalf of preservation of our heritage.
The award this year to the Camden County Historical Society is for its Camden County Heritage Tourism Plan, a collaborative marketing effort of 48 historic sites and history organizations presented by the Camden County History Alliance. The major activity of the Heritage Tourism Plan was to plan, implement and promote the first ever Camden County History Week held from October 13 to 21 in  2018. The nine day event brought more than 1000 visitors to 32 sites open to the public, launched seven thematic heritage trails, and positioned the Alliance to continue to grow heritage tourism in Camden County in the future by using the recommendations in the Heritage Tourism Plan.
The Historical Society worked with Preservation consultant Donna Ann Harris of Heritage Consulting Inc. of Philadelphia to create the Heritage Tourism Plan.  Over the course of a year and a half, Ms. Harris wrote three successful grants to plan and implement the Camden County Heritage Tourism Plan, which included as its major activity Camden County History Week. Dr. Jack O’Byrne, the Executive Director of the Camden County Historical Society was also successful in obtaining grant funds for design and printing all the literature for Camden County History Week from the William T. Rohrer Foundation.
