As it moved into the 21st century, the National Park Service embarked on an ambitious program of public involvement and civic engagement explicitly geared to the use of heritage sites to inform the public on contemporary issues. Meanwhile, although Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act mandates the recovery and dissemination of the information recovered from important archaeological sites in the name of public benefit, the contribution of the cultural resource management sector to the public or to civic engagement and education has not achieved its potential. This article explores some of the reasons behind this failure and provides two case studies showing how such an endeavor might work, along with suggestions for the future.