Wow. Those are huge drops at a time when most national parks are massively more visited than in 1970.
This is a complete surprise:
People who were interested in reenacting Civil War battles in costume are now too old or are more interested in reenacting as Vietnam War troops or cowboys, he said. "Cowboy re-enacting is where bitter, jaded Civil War re-enactors go,"
A Civil War reenactor in Georgia said, "The younger generations are not taught to respect history, and they lose interest in it.”
This is not a surprise, though I would question the idea that battlefield visits and re-enactments, often completely divorced from history (see the comment about "crazies"), are is a good way to "respect history."
I remember a noted theologian and Church historian, one of the top scholars of his generation, who once told me about a particular conference that was one of the most important, perhaps the most important, in his field, explaining why he would not attend and why I might consider refusing my invitation to speak: "We do agree that Church History should be historical, do we not?" By that he meant that devotional exercises disguised as history should not be confused with history.
