Hassan reintroduces bill to designate Canterbury Shaker Village a National Heritage Area

Canterbury Shaker Village could soon receive a National Heritage Area Designation, if Congress so desires. 

Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) reintroduced a bipartisan bill to start the process of bestowing the important designation upon the Canterbury Shaker Village on Monday.

It’s been read twice and referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. 

The museum site preserves the history of the Shakers, a Christian sect, organized in this country in the 1780s, which communicated and furthered egalitarian ideals. 

“Canterbury Shaker Village allows people of all ages and backgrounds to learn about the history of the Shakers,” Hassan wrote in a press statement. “Designating the Shaker Village as a National Heritage Area will allow the Shaker legacy to be preserved and for more people to learn about their way of life for years to come.” 

The bill, if passed and signed into law, would direct Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and the National Park Service to conduct a study on designating Canterbury Shaker Village as a National Heritage Area, which is the first step toward an ultimate designation of the same. 

It’s not the first attempt at a bill to bestow upon the Shaker village the designation — Hassan and Tillis tried in 2024, too. Leslie Nolan, former executive director of the village, called it a potential “game-changer,” and said last year receiving the historic designation would likely be a major boon to their operations. 

The language of the new bill acknowledges the Canterbury Shaker Village, established in 1792, played a prominent role in the United Society of Believers — commonly referred to as the Shakers — “which was the longest-lived and most successful of the several utopian experiments of the 19th century in the United States.” 

The growth of the Shaker movement was a significant factor of a “transformational religious and social fervor” of the United States, known as the “great awakening” which led to the development of numerous churches and sects that diversified and enriched U.S. society, the bill states. 

The Canterbury Shaker Village became increasingly important within the broader movement, eventually becoming the home of the Shaker Central Ministry which oversaw the consolidation of other Shaker settlements, preserving remnants of the society on a single site, located at 288 Shaker Road in modern-day Canterbury. 

The village at Canterbury was also the only Shaker community to transition from a religious society to a nonprofit museum.

In 1992, in recognition of its historical significance and physical integrity, Canterbury Shaker Village was designated a National Historic Landmark. It’s approximately 700 acres of land and contains 25 buildings, a verified archaeological resource, gardens, orchards, a community cemetery, miles of roadways, stone culverts and walls, and a chain of manmade ponds which have powered a range of industries, according to the bill. 

Years of concentrated surveying, mapping, photographic recordation, archaeological investigation and documentary research and writing reflect a public fascination with Canterbury Shaker Village, and “have defined a cultural landscape and a historical legacy that is of national significance and high educational and aesthetic value to the people of the United States."

If signed into law, it would be known as the Canterbury Shaker Village National Heritage Area.