Natchez Spring Pilgrimage 2013 is over — well, sort of anyway. A few post-pilgrimage events continue for the next few days, but the official end of this year’s pilgrimage was Tuesday.

By most accounts this year’s Spring Pilgrimage was quite a good one with house owners, shop owners and restaurants all touting that business was good.

A good Pilgrimage can set Natchez’s economic year off on a great course, and it appears that this year, pilgrimage spending will give our collective “boat” quite a nudge.

For those of us who don’t live in an antebellum house, work in a restaurant or own a retail shop, it’s easy for us to forget the importance of a good pilgrimage season.

Many restaurant owners have suggested in the past that Spring Pilgrimage can make or break their year.

We’re delighted that this year’s pilgrimage appears to have been a success.

The importance of pilgrimage underscores the constant need to protect and preserve Natchez’s history.

It’s easy for some people to poke fun at Natchez’s historic preservation laws and guidelines. But those rules and regulations are there to protect the greater good.

The money that comes into Natchez in the pockets of visitors who visit to experience our beautiful town is the most clean, most green type of economic development there is.

In addition to enjoying the influx of outside money in the form of additional business for locals and tax revenue for our government, local residents also get the benefit of living in a beautiful town and having more retail shops and restaurants than we might otherwise be able to support.

So celebrate a successful pilgrimage — even if you’re not a house owner — and realize, it benefits all of Natchez.