Congress may receive a proposal early next year to create a Lawrence-centered National Heritage Area featuring the region’s “Bleeding Kansas” history, officials said Monday.

“I would very much like to get this in the hopper in early 2004,” said Judge Deanell Tacha, leader of a committee organizing efforts to create the heritage area.

The committee, which met Monday, has hired historian Dale Nimz to complete a feasibility study that will serve as the basis of any federal legislation. Nimz said a rough draft of the study should be available this week.

He said that though area officials had hoped to broaden a heritage area to include the history of Haskell Indian Nations University and author Langston Hughes, federal parks officers had encouraged him to stick to the “Bleeding Kansas” theme, highlighting the area’s struggle with slavery in the 1850s, laying ground for the Civil War a few years later.

“The strongest case we have is for the Bleeding Kansas and Civil War era — that is what makes Kansas part of national importance at a particular point in time,” Nimz said.

Officials say federal designation of a heritage area here would draw federal dollars to help Lawrence and northeast Kansas preserve the area’s history — and promote that history to money-spending tourists.

Twenty-three heritage areas already are in the national park system, though the land and management remains in private hands.

Proponents hope they can persuade Congress to make the designation by 2004, when Lawrence and the Kansas Territory will celebrate their 150th anniversaries.

The notion has gained increasing support. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius granted $15,000 to the effort earlier this month through the Kansas Department of Commerce and Housing, and more than a dozen northeast Kansas towns and organizations have put money into the effort.

Lawrence Free Staters make a charge on Fort Titus during a re-enactment at the Territorial Days festival in Lecompton in this June 1999 file photo. A committee is pushing for the Lawrence area to receive a federal heritage designation.

“The people at the (National) Park Service are telling us we’re doing it right,” said Judy Billings, director of the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Getting the grass roots together is really important.”

Tacha said the Kansas delegation in Congress is eager to move forward with the project.

“Sen. (Sam) Brownback keeps asking me when we’re going to get this to them,” Tacha said. “They have some real challenges in Washington right now, but I think this will have national allure.”