Paper Abstracts
Anchoring the Grid: Investigating Commemorative Landscapes Associated with Initial Points of the Public Land Survey System
Timothy G. Anderson, Ohio University
The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is a distinctive method of land survey and subdivision crafted by the federal government in 1785 and subsequently implemented in most regions of the United States west of the Appalachians. Anyone who has flown over the American Midwest or Great Plains can observe the most conspicuous, outward feature of the PLSS, often informally referred to as the “Township/Range” system: a vast pattern of roads and property boundaries intersecting at right angles, oriented to the compass directions, fashioning a continental-scale checkerboard geometry upon the landscape. The federal government implemented the PLSS nationally by means of thirty-seven land surveys built around the grid of latitude and longitude lines as the federal government acquired and added new tracts of territory. Each survey comprised a grid built around a beginning north-south line (the “principal meridian”) and a beginning east-west line (the “base line”). Surveyors constructed the grid around north-south lines (township lines) and east-west lines (range lines) every six miles from the “initial point” where the principal meridian and base line intersected. This paper discusses some preliminary results of fieldwork assessing the commemorative landscapes associated with initial points of the PLSS surveys in the United States, focusing on characteristics of the material culture and monuments accompanying initial point sites.
An Exploration into the Cultural Representation of Food and Drink in Newspaper Comic Strips
Thomas L. Bell, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Subjects that appear quite often in newspaper comic strips are food and drink. They go far beyond Garfield’s love of lasagna or Dagwood Bumstead’s refrigerator raids. The cultural meanings of food and drink have both heavenly and hellish connotations and are often symbolic of, and related to, other aspects of modern life. These meanings are often contextual. To examine how a disparate group of writers and artists who produce comic strips approach the topic of food and drink within the context of North American culture, I collected a year’s worth of strips/panels in which food or drink was the focus of the strip. Thirty-eight different strips published in two Kentucky daily newspapers (the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Bowling Green Daily News) provide the data that were analyzed. This sample represents only a fraction of the comics that appear in the universe of all published newspapers, but the range of these strips is robust and inclusive enough for illustrative purposes. There were notable monthly variations in the importance of food and drink as a topical focus, with November (Thanksgiving) being the most important month. The positive (heavenly) representations of foods such as pizza, donuts, and ice cream and the negative (hellish) representations of others, especially vegetables led by disgust for kale, might leave nutritionists concerned about the unhealthy diets of North Americans. But in cartoon-land, it is certainly acceptable to eat dessert first and to vilify those peas and broccoli left on the dinner plate.
Detroit Black Heritage Tours: 1973 & today
Dan Bonenberger, Eastern Michigan University
Carrie Mallas, Ypsilanti Historic District Commission
Laura Waskiewicz, Missouri State Historic Preservation Office
Taylor Williams, Detroit Historical Society
Andrew DeWindt, Detroit Historical Society
Prior to the 1967 uprising, only one Black site in Detroit had been honored with a Michigan state historical marker. A Black Historic Sites Committee was formed in 1971, and by the end of the decade, a tour book was published and another fourteen sites designated. Since then, the number of Black historical markers has more than doubled, and dozens more have been designated as local historic districts or listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Numerous Black heritage tours have been developed in and around these sites, facilitating access for Detroiters and visitors.
The Digital Heritage Preservation Lab at Eastern Michigan University has begun the second year of a three-year African American Civil Rights survey of historic Black places on Detroit’s East Side that includes a driving tour enhanced by an internet map server. A review of past designations, inventories, and tours in Detroit and across the United States reveals how the themes represented and methods employed have evolved over the decades. Today’s virtual, bicycle, driving, and bus tours are accessed online and commemorate 20th century civil rights, creativity, and innovation. They are evaluated to reveal opportunities and challenges for the Black Detroit civil rights driving tour.
The Mormon Culture Region: The LDS Landscape in the 21st Century
Dawn S. Bowen, University of Mary Washington
Two geographers, Donald Meinig and Richard Francaviglia, documented the development of a distinct culture region associated with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), the Mormons. Arriving in Utah in 1847, the Mormons began creating a distinctive landscape that met their social needs in an often challenging physical environment. Meinig delimited the culture region, which extends far beyond Utah, while Francaviglia defined the landscape, noting the existence of ten elements that defined the space created by the Mormons. Using those elements, this presentation explores the visible landscape and documents through photographs continues to distinguish this Mormon culture region some 175 years after the first communities were established in Utah. There is no question that the LDS imprint on the landscape maintains it distinctiveness, particularly in the more rural parts of the state.
Five Days on the Road: US Route 90
Wayne Brew, Montgomery County Community College
US Route 90 is the southernmost highway of the major east west routes established in 1926 as one of the first generation numbered federal routes. It is the only route ending in zero that was not coast to coast, the other routes did so for at least a portion of their history. Many portions of US Route 90 follow the pathway of the Old Spanish Trail. It runs approximately 1620 miles from Van Horn, Texas to Jacksonville Beach, Florida. For a brief period (1939 to 1940) it ventured further north of Van Horn to Guadalupe Pass, Texas. In 1950 it was extended from Jacksonville-to-Jacksonville Beach. US Route 90 connects major cities including San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, Tallahassee, and Jacksonville. It was replaced by I-10 which follows a good portion of 90 except for Texas where US 90 dips far to the south traveling along the US-Mexico border. Fortunately, most US 90 remains intact with only small portions obliterated by I-10.
Bear Meat and Raccoon Bacon: Mapping Missouri Foodways, Place Attachment, & Identity in a Heritage Context
Sarah A. Coppersmith, University of Missouri-St. Louis
Preliminary findings from the place-based qualitative study Mapping Missouri Foodways, Place Attachment, and Identity in a Heritage Context reveal select Missouri citizens’ place attachment, identity, perceptions, and practices in both current and past food culture in the Booneslick region. Results from primary sources, church picnics, suppers, and county fairs highlight the traditional geographic study of place and the significance of agricultural fairs within settlement patterns through the growth of agriculture in the Booneslick since the 1820s. This examination includes citizen surveys on the development of fairs and the accompanying historic church pork sausage suppers and chicken dinners. The study incorporates perceptions and practices of citizens, archivists, historians, churches, and historical societies. Churches and county fairs in the region along the Boone’s Lick Road and Missouri River valley are celebrating milestones of 190 years or more, and the historic and ongoing resilience, commitment, and connections of immigrant settlers remain evident. This type of approach — viewing the food culture of a particular place through the eyes of the people who live there — with cultural hearths expressing distinctive regional American cultures, connects with long-standing traditions in cultural geography that emphasize the role of communities in shaping regional identity. The project’s results are represented through geospatial mapping and surveys of foodways patterns and practices in landscapes amenable to settlement, including current citizen histories from select sites.
Creating Digital Access to Local History: The Frank B. Butler Virtual Tour
Caroline Davis, University of Florida
Lincolnville is a historically Black community located just outside St. Augustine, Florida’s bustling downtown area. Established in the late 1800s, it is included in the National Historic Register and home to numerous Victorian era homes and a historic Black high school celebrating its centennial this year. The latter is now known as the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center (LMCC), which focuses on preserving the community’s history. Under the employment of the LMCC, the author helped develop a “virtual tour” on the history of this community, including local businessman Frank B. Butler, who lived in Lincolnville and owned numerous businesses including a realty firm that benefitted the well-being of the neighborhood and larger community. Butler established one of the few Black-owned beaches along the east coast of Florida which became a haven for Black citizens who could not access other beaches due to segregation. The project details Butler’s accomplishments and his legacy in Saint Augustine. The virtual tour was researched, filmed, and edited in-house by LMCC staff. Initially, this project bloomed from the need to reach audiences during the tumultuous experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, engaging audiences while maintaining safe social distancing practices. Today, the virtual tour preserves the cultural landscape of Lincolnville from growing threats of gentrification and flooding, while seeking to engage audiences and increase accessibility to the history of Lincolnville. This paper will detail the process of researching and creating the virtual tour, as well as the impacts of modern technology have on accessibility and the preservation of African American histories.
Literary Pilgrimage: Making Meaning at Authors’ Gravesites
Nathaniel Drenner, Penn State Harrisburg
Visit the gravesite of Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, or Henry David Thoreau in Concord, MA, and you will inevitably find pencils planted around their stone markers — simple, yellow, No. 2 pencils, plus other tokens left behind by previous visitors. The practice of offering votives, by now an evergreen material feature of Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, is part of a tradition of literary pilgrimage with roots in Europe. It is a centuries-old practice of memorial and identity formation that some 19th century American writers adopted before they, too, became part of present-day cultural landscapes like Sleepy Hollow.
Drawing on the work of Samantha Matthews, Klara Szlezák, Paul Westover, and others, I will trace the evolving practice of visiting literary “shrines” as it moved from the Old World to the New. A particular form of tourism, gravesite pilgrimage has multiple rhetorical functions. For one, it idolizes the writer, their works, and by extension, readers and tourists. As such, the gravesite monument would seem to cement existing cultural narratives and values. However, it preserves a legacy that successive generations shape and re-interpret in their own ways. Through marks on the landscape, among other means, visitors author the history of the writers alongside the writers themselves. Thus, as a symbol of intangible heritage, the gravesite exists in both harmony and tension with the various “texts” it purports to represent.
Though it is a practice steeped in privilege and tradition, I will argue that the gravesite pilgrimage ritual, like a literary text, allows individuals to imaginatively participate in the ongoing formation of new cultural meanings. In my study I will consider physical details of sites like those in Concord, published accounts of visitation, and my own autoethnographic experience. I will also consider the work that needs to be done to diversify such sites.
Exploring Material Culture in Micronesia: The Role of the “Tree of Life”, coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) in local Culture, Environment and Survival.
Maria Fadiman, Hawortson Heinrich, Kenneth Broad, David Harrison, Shireen Rahimi, Vladyslav Kushnir
We explore the connection between natural resource use, immigration, emigration, and the inter-generational transfer of survival knowledge in light of global climate change with islanders in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Using the lens of ethnobotany, we focus on the coconut palm, as locals say, “It is the Tree of Life,” despite it not being a tree at all. The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) is a member of the palm family (Arecaceae) commonly found throughout tropical regions. This palm is unique in that it provides food, material culture, and elicits a profound human/nature connection. The FSM locals use the palm for construction, food, baskets and assorted artisanry. Intertwined with the material culture importance, is how the islanders feel about the palm, which includes accessibility. Who can obtain the materials ties into the social hierarchy and spatial relationship between different island groups on their islands of origin and on those to which they immigrated. When asked about what plant they wanted their children to learn, the answer was immediate: the coconut palm. As a piece of a larger project, through interviewing, artistic exercises and participant observation, the team collected data about how the Kapinga, Nukuoro and the Mortlockese use, regard and protect this natural resource and in through doing so, stay connected to home, culture, land, and their children.
The Making of the Pioneer Woman Statue in Oklahoma
Alyson Greiner, Oklahoma State University
In 1930, the Pioneer Woman statue in Ponca City, Oklahoma captured national attention. Today, however, the statue and its adjacent museum, are less widely known. While much of the discourse about the Pioneer Woman statue in the late 1920s and early 1930s emphasized settler-colonial themes, another theme was arguably just as central: paternalism. Conceived, designed, and dedicated by men, the making of the Pioneer Woman statue reveals a complicated and fascinating convergence of local and national sentiments. Conceptually positioned at the intersection of material culture studies and historical geography, this paper examines the making of the Pioneer Woman statue in relation to the zeitgeist of the time.
“A View from Above: Exploring Albert Ruger’s Bird’s Eye View Maps of Kentucky.”
Margaret M. Gripshover, Western Kentucky University
In the second half of the 19th century, bird’s eye maps became a coveted decoration in the parlors of the well-to-do, as well as those in the aspirational middle class. The majority of these “maps,” which were considered works of art, depicted urban landscapes from a unique perspective. Bird’s eye “viewmakers” created images of communities from an oblique angle, replete with streets, buildings, topographic features, and other points of interest. Contrary to popular belief, bird’s eye view maps were not created from hot air balloons. Rather, viewmakers typically found a useful vantage point above the town to interpret the landscape. The maps were then reproduced through lithography and sold through subscriptions. Bird’s eye view maps became wildly popular after the Civil War as the U.S. rode a wave of patriotism and boosterism. One of the leading bird’s eye artists of this era was Albert Ruger (1828-1899), a German immigrant who settled in Akron, Ohio. Ruger was a stone mason by trade when he enlisted in the Union Army in 1865. During his brief service, he learned the bird’s eye trade by drafting maps of military encampments. Between 1868 and 1883, Ruger produced dozens of commercial bird’s eye maps, mostly of cities in the Midwest. He did, however, travel south of the Ohio River during the 1870s, to towns in Tennessee and Kentucky. The purpose of this paper is to examine Ruger’s bird’s eye view maps of Kentucky, with a focus on the city of Bowling Green. I will explore why certain cities were chosen as his subjects, and how Ruger’s maps hold up today in terms of accuracy and artistic merit.
Explorations in Historic Major League Baseball Stadium Postcards: Placemaking and Changing Urban Forms
Douglas A. Hurt, University of Missouri
Adam A. Payne, Auburn University
A small, but growing, number of geographers have utilized historic postcard imagery to investigate the shaping of American places, particularly townscapes, regional imagery, and roadside landscapes. Especially between 1920 and 1970, postcard publishers and photographers created thousands of cards that contributed to the formation of place perceptions amongst the public. This was particularly true before the widespread adoption of televisions beginning in the late 1940s, after which Americans could more easily consume imagery. In this exploratory paper, we utilize historic Major League Baseball stadium postcards to examine the changing relationships between stadiums and their surrounding cities. For this presentation, we’ve limited ourselves to the eight teams playing in the American League prior to 1961. We followed the progression of each baseball club from their earliest to their current stadium. At this point, our initial observations revolve around the relationship between stadiums and their adjacent neighborhoods, the portrayal of sense of place inside stadiums, as well as the changing architectural features and distinctive layouts that characterized these urban landmarks.
Updating National Historic Districts: Experiences from Three Johnstown, Pennsylvania Neighborhoods
Ola Johannson, University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is a designation of historic places in United States worthy of preservation, and it is maintained by the National Park Service. The designation does not protect buildings from neglect and potential demolishment; however, being on the NRHP has tax advantages and federal and state money can be made available for redevelopment projects in neighborhoods that are listed on the NRHP. Several neighborhoods in Johnstown, Pennsylvania were placed on the NRHP during the 1990s, as Historic Districts. During approximately 30 years since the surveys were completed, significant neighborhood changes have taken place. In collaboration with a local civic organization, Vision 2025, students at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown conducted field studies in three Johnstown neighborhoods (Cambria City, Minersville, and Old Conemaugh Borough) with the objective of updating the reports and determining how much of the built environment that contributed to the Historic District is still intact. This presentation reports on the challenges that emerged during this process.
“1v1 Me on Rust”: Nostalgia and Sense of Place in Online Video Game Multiplayer Maps
Seth T. Kannarr, University of Tennessee
Jarod
Kannarr, Independent Scholar
Playing video games is an ever-growing pastime with an estimated over 3.3 billion active gamers worldwide. An essential component to online multiplayer game experiences for these players is that of the ‘map’, or the virtual terrains and structures created for which gameplay takes place upon. Some maps are preferred by players over others, whether for more fun or strategic gameplay or for more beautiful or creative aesthetics. As gamers, we have found that particular multiplayer maps continue to resonate in our minds over time, well after the game has ended. These maps can serve as roots of nostalgia for good times and memories with others, and some maps become so classic or iconic that they build a cultural imprint that transcends the gaming community and perpetuates into public memory over the years. In this project we seek to explore how multiplayer maps can instill a sense of place and foster feelings of nostalgia for people over time, turning virtual environments created by developers into real places of memory for gamers everywhere.
Curators and Cemi Idols: The Museum Afterlives of Material Personhood
Peter Kyriacou- University of South Florida
In the wake of the material turn, non-human beings are increasingly recognized as embedded within specific social and cultural contexts. In the world of the Tainos, cemies were both artefacts and embodied with personhood, carrying out relationships with human and non-human beings. This project seeks to trace the biographies of cemi idols across temporal and spatial landscapes. In addition to tracing the processes of production, alienation, and exchange that allowed these idols to proliferate across the Caribbean and beyond, this project accounts for the agency and social identities that cemi idols possessed. This project uses archival research and a “biography of things” approach to track the trajectories of cemi idols, and how the contexts that these non-human beings existed in have informed their present day locations within gift shops, museums, and private collections.
Identity, Banal Nationalism, Popular Geopolitics, and License Plates of the Caribbean and Latin America
Jonathan Leib, Old Dominion University
The past 100 years has been referred to as the “century of the car”, and for much of the past century the state has been active in the regulation and registration of automobiles. Beyond facilitating mobility, however, automobiles have become bound up in the formation of national identities. And, in this automobile era, one of the most visible expressions of a person’s place of residence is on the license plate attached to their vehicle. As part of this effort to shape national identities, political elites in various parts of the world have used their license plates as a way to craft an image of their state that is visible daily to much of its population. Fitting into the larger geographic research on automobility, as well as political geography research on banal nationalism and popular geopolitics, in this presentation I will discuss how license plates have been scripted to promote identity, nationalism, statehood, and pursue geopolitical objectives with examples drawn from the Caribbean and Latin America.
The Mount Saint Helen’s National Volcanic Monument, a Land Thriving in Transition”
R. Jason Lenz, Creek Run Environmental Engineering
Mount Saint Helen’s erupted in southern Washington state on May 18, 1980, at 8:32 am. It was Mother’s Day. The eruption devastated more than 68,000 acres of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company land. Killing thousands of large game animals, destroying 20 bridges, and killing 57 people. In 1982, 200 square miles and more and 100,000 acres were designated as Mount Saint Helen’s National Volcanic Monument. In 1987 a visitor center was completed and was renovated in 2025. My research, and this paper, will discuss how the region is now thriving after more than one billion dollars in damage occurred because of the eruption that morning. The research will concentrate on one of my visits that occurred in August 2024, where I hiked to the south rim. A climb of more 6,000 feet and more than nine miles round trip.
Shuffling through the past: A student perspective on archival processing and exhibit creation
Maile McCall, University of Florida
From the 1980s-early 2000s, Dr. Kathleen Deagan worked as a historical archaeologist and eventually the curator of historical archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. She primarily studied the Spanish colonization of Florida and the Dominican Republic, specifically in St. Augustine, Fl, and La Isabela and La Vega. This paper presentation will discuss her career and the archival process of her notes and correspondence from this time to create a temporary exhibition at the Marston Science Library at the University of Florida in Fall of 2026. The theoretical basis for such will be rooted in historical epistemology, archival theory, and a discussion of how exhibits in non-museum spaces can still create community. The subsequent exhibit will focus on the challenges of being a woman archaeologist from the 1980s-2000s, what it was like working both in Florida and abroad, and will include anecdotes from time in the field.
“What is this Bullshit?”: Ecological Perspectives of Food, Memory, and Home in Migrant Poetry
Michelle Medved, Indiana University-Bloomington
Utilizing an ecolinguistic lens and migrant-written poetry from the anthology Border Lines: Poems of Migration this study explores how mobility-created tensions complicate immigrants’ lives while also raising economic and sustainability questions. Primarily consisting of environmental landscapes (both material and imagined) and important rituals around plants, the poets employ nature to express complex feelings about identity, memory, longing, and traditional ecological values. Within private spaces, spices and produce become a vital part of recreating memories and passing down intergenerational knowledge. Specific plants, even non-edible ones, can reflect cultural or religious values that are key to creating a sense of “home” for immigrants.
These practices are part of larger efforts in attempts to remake “home.” Yet, as reflected in home studies more broadly, home is never just ‘home as haven.’ Homemaking efforts are complicated by larger forces at the societal and global level –globalization, conflict, environmental devastation, immigration policy, etc. One migrant family’s pursuit of replicating a favorite dish, for instance, is impacted by their ability to grow or import certain products, which may have environmental, economic, or political obstacles. These multiscalar forces are further illustrated in the poetry’s environmental imagery –some of destroyed homelands, of cherished memories the poet wishes to return to, and others as metaphors for migration and homemaking itself. There is often a pull between the imagined/remembered and reality, the old country and the new country, the starkness of change, even from anticipated change. This research centers on migrants’ voices to examine how they enact agency, express identity, and pass on values amidst larger complicating forces.
“Truly Marvelous in this House”: Bishop S. C. Madison’s Afrosurrealist Building Program for the United House of Prayer for All People, 1991-2001
William D. Moore, Boston University
Between 1991 and 2001, the United House of Prayer for All People, a Black Protestant Pentecostal religious denomination headquartered in the District of Columbia, erected more than eighty churches in American cities from New Bedford, Massachusetts to St. Louis, Missouri, and from Detroit, Michigan to Miami, Florida, along with three on the Pacific Coast. Under the leadership of Bishop Samuel C. Madison, the sect’s third leader, the church commissioned the North Carolina firms of Overcash-Demmitt Architects and Urban Architectural Group to design places of worship that promoted the denomination’s identity while simultaneously supporting its particular religious praxis, which included baptism, the production and sale of affordable soul food, speaking in tongues, and trombone shout band performances of praise music.
The resulting remarkable edifices uniformly feature three entrances, bear the group’s name prominently on the façade, and display three crosses, pairs of leonine figures, and gold-colored statues of winged angels. Beyond these standard characteristics, the designers and the client displayed great creativity in producing imposing, colorful, post-modern sanctuaries that play upon Gothic, Egyptian revival, Moorish, Art Deco, Spanish-Mission revival, Classicism, and modern architectural precedents.
Drawing upon the writings of poet Amiri Baraka, philosopher René Ménil, activist Suzanne Césaire, and literary scholar D. Scot Miller, this twenty-minute illustrated presentation will places these edifices within the sect’s historical and theological trajectory while simultaneously situating them within Afrosurrealism by arguing that their revolutionary, mystical, and metaphorical designs work to construct an alternative future by, in Miller’s words, “revisit[ing] old ways with new eyes.” This Black organization’s marvelous structures, to employ a surrealist adjective recontextualized within contemporary Black arts, reference both the past and the future, employing hybridization and cultural subversion in pursuit of individual grace and collective empowerment.
The American West of Alaska
Samuel M. Otterstrom, Brigham Young University
Alaska is in a unique place geographically and historically within the cultural construct of the American West. It is not contiguous to the rest of the West, and it was settled in a later wave than most of the West. Not only is it separated physically, but it also has natural features that are of a superlative scale and expanse. This paper explores the correlations and contrasts between the American West south of 49 degrees North and the “Last Frontier” of Alaska far to the northwest using signs and markers in the cultural and physical landscape.
Affective Regeneration in the Commemorative Landscape at Kent State
Chris W. Post, Kent State University
On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen shot into a crowd of Kent State University students peacefully protesting the United States expanding its Vietnam incursion into Cambodia. Firing 67 shots in 13 seconds, the guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine. Over the past fifty-plus years since these shootings, the university’s commemorative response has shifted from rejection to hesitant acknowledgment to embrace while a number of survivors, students, and faculty within the community have carried the responsibility to commemorate May 4. As the most recent addition to an ever-developing commemorative landscape, the Wounded Student Markers developed through a rare example of transaction between future visitor and memorial, except the visitors are the remembered. This paper situates these memorials and two other markers — the annual candlelight vigil and Prentice Hall Individual Student Markers — within two aspects of memorial landscapes: that landscapes are always becoming and may be empowered to regenerate a sense of connection and place through their development and interaction with visitors.
War and Peace in Place: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Landscape Meanings
Rex J. Rowley, Illinois State University
The development and deployment of the American atomic bomb changed the world. As it did, it changed places that were touched by its influence along the way. No places were more affected by the bomb than Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Eighty years have now passed since these two cities were devastated in war, but both stand today as symbols and strong advocates of peace on both national and global stages. In this paper, I present some preliminary analysis of the cultural landscapes in each city. I will identify how each city’s residents and leaders have chosen to memorialize the bombings in peace parks, memorial halls, and museums. I compare similarities and contrast differences that affect a visitor’s experience and the meanings of both peace and war embedded in the landscape. I also move away from the established and well-known monuments to other areas of the city that highlight similar meanings, but also deepen a connection to place for visitors and residents. Finally, will discuss how a “peace identity” permeates each location’s sense of place, an identity that was born in one of the most destructive wartime events in human history.