Petit Jean State Park [AR]

Description

Petit Jean features CCC/Rustic Style architecture that endures as a legacy to the craftsmanship and conservation achievements of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The park includes three National Historic Districts and contains more than 80 buildings, trails, and bridges. The most prominent architectural structure, Mather Lodge, stretches along the bluff of scenic Cedar Creek Canyon. The bluffs, waterfalls, and vistas of Petit Jean Mountain inspired the creation of Arkansas's first state park, and along with it Arkansas's state park system.

The site offers occasional recreational and educational events.

Getty Center [CA]

Description

The Getty Center presents artworks with dates of origin ranging the Medieval period to present day. Collections include manuscripts, drawings, paintings, photographs, decorative arts, and sculpture. Members of nearly all of these categories are solely European in origin at the Getty Center. However, select photographs were produced in the United States. The center's research library contains more than 900,000 volumes.

The center offers a 10-minute orientation video, exhibits, gardens, guided collection highlight tours, guided garden tours, guided exhibit tours, guided focus tours, guided architecture tours, audio tours, self-guided sculpture garden tours, self-guided student tours, guided student architecture and garden tours, interactive guided lessons for students, a family room, research library access, a teacher resource center, a variety of teacher workshops and institutes, a restaurant, two cafes, a picnic area, and coffee carts. Appointments are recommended for research library use. Teachers may reserve audio guides for their students. Strollers and wheelchairs are available for use on site. The website offers the 10-minute orientation video, a collections database, a guide to creating lessons which focus on the arts, more than 200 searchable lesson plans, online games, a virtual world for children, and an educator listserv.

Rosemount Museum [CO]

Description

The Rosemount Museum is an 1893 Richardsonian Romanesque mansion largely furnished with pieces original to the site. The first owner, John A. Thatcher, co-founded the First National Bank of Pueblo.

The museum offers period rooms, tours, and a restaurant. The site is closed every January for routine maintenance.

Colonial Williamsburg [VA]

Description

Colonial Williamsburg is the world's single largest living history museum. It consists of the reconstructed 18th-century British outpost of Williamsburg, VA. Through costumed interpreters and structures furnished to period, the museum shares the story of America and its people—Native American, African American, Caucasian, enslaved, indentured, and free—circa 1699 through 1780. The historic area includes political and residential sites, trade skill settings, a plantation, gardens, and animal breeds of circa 200 years ago. Museums on site include the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.

The site offers exhibits, period rooms, living history interpreters, demonstrations, walking tours, dramatic performances, military exercises, fife and drum parades, ghost walks, mock witch trials, films, lectures, music programs, reenactments, a teacher institute in early American history, children's activities, curriculum-based tours for students, museum tours, conferences, forums, workshops, concession stands, and several dining locations with period-inspired food. The website offers audio tours, a virtual tour, virtual exhibits, information on historical structures and people, information on aspects of daily life, recipes, electronic field trips, lesson plans, teaching resources for purchase, slide shows, videos, audio clips, a daily vocabulary feature, podcasts, blogs, activities and games, and journal excerpts

Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park and Pioneer Museum [KY]

Description

Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park, site of the 1782 American Revolution Battle of Blue Licks, preserves the history of the site. At the Pioneer Museum, located in the park, visitors can learn about the area's history from prehistoric times to the days of the pioneers.

The park offers exhibits, historical trails and nature trails, programs and tours for school groups of all grade levels (fees starting at $3 per student), tent camping for school groups ($2 per person), and other recreational and educational events.

Mammoth Spring State Park [AR]

Description

Mammoth Spring, the 10th largest spring in the world, and a National Natural Landmark, flows nine million gallons of water each hour. Following the Civil War, this immense water source attracted industrialists who built a gristmill, and later, a dam here. Next, the investors opened large roller mills and a shoe factory. Soon after, the railroad arrived. Still standing near the spring is the charming 1886 Frisco Depot. At the dam, you can walk through the 1925 power plant that brought electricity to the region long before most other rural areas.

The site offers short films, exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Scotty's Castle [CA]

Description

Scotty's Castle, or the Death Valley Ranch, was designed as a vacation home for a wealthy Chicago couple, Albert Mussey Johnson and his wife Bessie. However, according to legend, it was built by Walter Scott or "Death Valley Scotty" with the earnings from his secret mines. The site interprets the Roaring 20s and the 1930s, which suffered from the Great Depression. Construction was permanently halted in 1931 when Johnson and Scott discovered that the site was located on government land.

The home offers 50-minute living history tours, tours for students, exhibits, a snack bar, and picnic areas. Tours interpret the year 1939. Tour transcriptions are available in Japanese, German, Dutch, Korean, Russian, Slovenian, Italian, Czech, Danish, Spanish, and French. The website offers a virtual tour.

The second floor is temporarily inaccessible by wheelchair. Gasoline is currently unavailable on site. The nearest gasoline is located 45 miles from the site.