MISSISSIPPI STATE -- The third annual Miss-Lou Rural Tourism Summit, designed to educate rural tourism workers, is scheduled for Aug. 12-14 at Vicksburg’s Southern Cultural Heritage Center.

This year’s summit theme, “Cultivating Your Community with Fresh Ideas and Fresh Air, Enhancing Rural Tourism Opportunities by Marketing Your Local Assets,” focuses on marketing local communities through nature tourism, cultural tourism and agritourism. Tourism professionals and educators from around the southeast will address topics such as getting started in agritourism, the value of public lands and how to market natural resources recreational sites.

Participants will hear from local tourism business owners and see historical and natural sites in Vicksburg and Rolling Fork. Visits are scheduled to antebellum homes, natural wildlife parks and sites on the Mississippi Blues trail. Receptions will be held at the BB Club of Vicksburg and the Southern Cultural Heritage Center. A pre-conference tour will take participants across the river to Louisiana to the Hermione Museum, the Poverty Point Reservoir State Park and the High Delta Safari Park.

Conference and registration information is available from the Southern Rural Development Center at http://srdc.msstate.edu/misslou/. Participants also may register on site beginning at 1 p.m. Aug. 12.

Writer: Ned Browning