Since the opening of the Capitol Visitor Center in 2008, visitor guides have led over two million visitors on tours of the US Capitol building each year. Guide experiences on tours are examined here using six original interviews and twelve survey responses conducted by the author in 2021 and 2022. The discussions are contextualized within the legacies and realities of tour guiding in the US Capitol building, including securitization, employment structures, and tourism. The analysis reveals tensions that arise between mass tourism, public history best practices, and the Capitol as an institution. These tensions unfold both on the large scale between the employee and the institution and within the interpersonal scale of the tour group. Although the scale of Capitol touring is exceptional, its status as a contested site of history is not. The inquiry serves as a preliminary study that can apply to further studies about federal history employment, Washington tourism, and public history labor with polarized publics.
Lauren Rever (Fri,) studied this question.