Northwest Tyrone
Church and State are represented in the county town of Omagh by two adjacent buildings that would grace any town: the fine classical courthouse built in 1863, and the Catholic Sacred Heart Church with its Victorian Gothic irregular twin spires, built some 30-years later. Omagh, in the latter half of the 20 th century, was a town more integrated and harmonious than most in Northern Ireland and yet suffered the worst single atrocity in the history of the Troubles. In August 1998, a 500-pound car bomb, planted by the Real IRA, slaughtered twenty-six people outright (three more later died), ripping-up most of the eastern part of Market Street. The courthouse, at the western end of the street, was most probably the terrorist target.
The Ulster American Folk Park is located 3-miles north of Omagh in Camphill, and is the most successful of N. Ireland's American heritage projects. Emigration from Ireland to the US began in the 18 th century, many of whom were of Scottish Protestant origin. Of all the immigrant communities in the US, it was the Irish who most quickly and profoundly made their mark - the three first-generation US presidents were all of Ulster stock, and a further nine presidents could trace their roots to here.
Throughout the 18 th and 19 th centuries, thousands left Ireland for the New World, and the steady flow of emigrants became a torrent during the Famine years. Detailed information on causes and patterns of migration is available in the Folk Park's indoor gallery, but the major attractions lie outside in the park itself, where original buildings have been transplanted or replicas constructed to provide a sense of Ulster life in the past.
The friendly market village of Castlederg is located in one of the least visited parts of Ireland, the far northwestern outlands of Co. Tyrone. The village sits around a spruced-up square beside the River Derg, across whose waters lie the ruins of a Plantation castle, built in 1619 and destroyed by Sir Phelim O'Neill during the 1641 Rebellion. The family of American frontiersman Davy Crockett came from here, and the Castlederg Visitor Centre contains a model of the Alamo Fort where he made his ‘last stand'. Such is the absurdity of sectarianism that Castlederg used to have separate Protestant and Catholic Christmas trees erected annually!
To the east of Castlederg, nestling in the lushness of rich farmland is Newtonstewart, which surprisingly for its size boasts remnants of two castles. In the main street a gable wall is all that remains of the Stewart castle, burned down on the orders of James II. Squatting in isolation on a hill to the southwest are the ruins of the 14 th century Henry Avery's castle, another O'Neill stronghold. But Newtonstewart's real attraction is the marvellous museum housed in the Gateway Centre and Museum. Local historian Billy Dunbar donated his eccentric but diverting collections of memorabilia before his death - such oddities as a yoke specially designed for lifting hedgehogs.
In the 18 th century, Strabane was an important printing and publishing centre. John Dunbar emigrated from Ireland and went on to print the broadsheets of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, as well as the ‘Pennsylvanian Packet', America's first daily newspaper. All that Strabane has left to show for those times is the cute bow-windowed frontage of Gray's Printing Shop, with its small printing museum upstairs. One of Strabane's most famous sons was Flann O'Brien (1911-66), the surreal/comic novelist. Another, less entertaining individual to have his roots in the area is the 28 th American president, Woodrow Wilson. Two miles from Strabane is the Wilson ancestral home in the village of Dergalt, a magnet for American tourists.