For America’s 250th birthday, we have spent a year looking back at the ideals that launched the nation, the people who shaped it and the moments that tested it.

Now comes the harder question: Will Americans still care when the anniversary is over?

History should not be something we dive into only for a major anniversary, a school trip to Washington or the Fourth of July – and then pack away with the banners and bunting. Understanding where our country has been – what we got right, where we fell short and the arguments that have shaped us – matters to understanding the country we live in now.

Some of the best places to do that are hiding in plain sight.

We need to visit where American history really happened

Presidential birthplaces and childhood homes, libraries and museums, historic houses, history and civic education organizations, and even colleges attended by presidents and first ladies preserve and teach pieces of our national story. Some are famous. Others are places you might drive past without realizing what happened there.

Leaders from more than 100 of these places gathered in Washington for the White House Historical Association’s Presidential Sites Summit earlier this month to consider what comes after the 250th. One question kept coming up: How do we keep Americans who caught the history bug – or simply became a little more curious – interested after the anniversary is over?

History looks different when you are in the place where it happened.

At George Washington’s Mount Vernon in........

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