DiscoverJMSTJamestown (CSi) The Jamestown Tourism Board has approved having Talking Trails, a Mandan-based company, perform an assessment of the community before the end of this year, to determine which stories about Jamestown and the community would be compelling to visitors and the best way to get those stories told.

The cost for this assessment is $5,000, and the cost of placing a sign denoting a historic or notable place is $600.

The owner of Talking Trails, Marlo Anderson, says the company visits a community, to determine where its stories are, and then gets those stories from credible, local sources. The process then continues with setting up a trail with stop points along the way. Stop points have signs and include a telephone number to call to hear the story or information about that stop.

Jamestown Tourism Executive Director Searle Swedlund says he had talked with Anderson about doing something similar in Jamestown. He said this effort would be part of Jamestown Tourism’s goal of telling the story of Jamestown.

Anderson says the initial assessment will take about a week, then he and his staff will create a report and present it to the Jamestown Tourism Board. He said there can be as many sites along the route as Jamestown Tourism wants, but each sign costs $600.

Tourism Board President Mitzi Hager says the board is just having the assessment done for now and no decisions have been made about how many stops would be on any route using the Talking Trails system.