Along its 170 years of development the Bulgarian Native region studies (Homeland studies) have always been based on Geography and Geographic research. This paper reviews the Geographic materials of Native region studies, attributed to two conditional periods: a Proto-Geographical (since it has been assumed that 1898 marks the beginning of Bulgarian Geography) and Geographical period.

Contributions of Bulgarian Geographers result from precise and extremely conscientious Regional-Geographic and Settlement-Geographic research carried out by Professor Anasstas Ishirkov (founder of Bulgarian Geography), and his students. Earnest followers of the German school from the end of the 19th century, they developed modern Anthropo-Geography. They carried out complex regional research in Bulgaria, which made models of Homeland (native region) studies. Several special guidebooks (practical guides) explaining how to do such kind of research were published. Another Geographer, G. Gunchev published the first Homeland study journal in Bulgaria (called „Native region studies archives“, 1938).

The results of these investigations have been jointly published in the first monograph of Geography of Bulgaria, in two volumes (1961, 1966). After the middle of the 20th century Anthropo-Geography has been proclaimed as an anti-scientific subject in Socialist Bulgaria and gradually Settlement-Geographic research subsided, it attained one-sided, sectoral (Economic-Geographic) character. At that same time school Homeland studies developed (as a descriptive, illustrative way to raise the effectiveness all subjects, particularly of Geographic education). This brought to mass introduction of school trips as well as other forms of extra-curricular education.

In the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century the Geographical branch of native region studies has been experiencing stagnation. From Geographic point of view several initiatives have been offered to regenerate and optimize modern Homeland studies.