With the holiday shopping season just around the corner, the state wants visitors and locals alike to take to the historic Harriet Tubman Byway to spend their money.
Twelve shops and restaurants in Historic Old New Castle were added to the list of those partnering with the byway this week, and officials, including Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), toured some of them on Tuesday.
The Small Business Administration’s Tubman Byway program launched in March and now boasts 28 businesses on the nearly 95-mile trail used by the Underground Railroad in the First State.
Those businesses offer special deals as part of the program -- and the SBA’s John Banks says it's all starting bring in more customers:
"We're still in the early stages of the development, but we are getting more and more businesses there [and] starting to see a significant return," says Banks, the SBA's deputy district director for Delaware. Our plan in the long term is not only to focus here on Harriet Tubman Byway, but we want to look at all six byways in the state and make sure that the businesses that are located there -- we bring about an awareness of who they are, where they are."
State officials have also been touting the Delaware Bayshore Byway as part of efforts to expand tourism, preserve local history and help out small businesses in the state.
The Small Business Administration also announced it's launching smartphone access to "Byway Bucks," which started out as paper currency featuring Harriet Tubman's likeness. Shoppers could print and redeem the bucks for discounts and freebies at businesses on the byway.
Now, people can get Byway Bucks and see deals on any mobile device at the byway website without having to print them out to use them.
"One of the challenges we had with the Byway Buck itself, the paper version, was distribution. We said, okay, where are we going to put 'em? We put 'em in tourist locations, we put 'em here, we put 'em there, but we still can't distribute them the way that we wanted," says Banks of the SBA. "Now with the mobile aspect of the byway buck, it really helps us to really get the coupon in the hands of tourists."
The Tubman Byway launched in March with businesses in Wilmington’s Southbridge neighborhood, then expanded to Camden and Wyoming in July.
It now spans 12 sites in Old New Castle, 7 in Southbridge and 9 in Camden and Wyoming, following the route Harriet Tubman used to guide fugitive slaves north to freedom in the Civil War era.
You can see byway deals and locations by logging onto the Tubman Byway channel on the TagWhat app, or at TubmanBywayDelaware.org.
