The purpose of Año Nuevo State Park is to preserve and protect a substantial area on the western slope of the central Coast Range inland from Año Nuevo Point. Cultural resources include the remnants of a prehistoric Native American village site and a number of structures from the 19th-century Cascade Ranch.

The park offers exhibits and tours.

Anderson Marsh State Historic Park contains oak woodlands, grass-covered hills, and tule marsh. One of the largest groups of people in prehistoric California, the Southeastern Pomo, knew this land as home. Today, descendants of those people still live nearby. Anderson Marsh's archaeological sites hold clues to the lives of the Pomo. Some sites are over 10,000 years old, making them among the oldest in California. Visitors can also explore the past at the historic Anderson Ranch, with its 19th-century structures.

The parks offers exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Before European settlement, Native Americans planted their crops of corn and beans on Conanicut Island overlooking Narragansett Bay. In 1789, Job Watson purchased a piece of this rich farmland, and for the next two centuries, five successive generations of the Watson family cultivated the land, changing their crops and practices as needed to adapt to the evolving market. Today, the property is still a working family farm. The farmers raise cattle and sheep for beef, lamb, and wool markets; grow acres of grass for winter hay supplies; make compost for fertilizer; and cultivate a large vegetable garden. The 1796 house, still used as the farmers' residence, is not open to the public. Visitors are welcome to explore the farmland on their own, following a self-guided walking tour. Educational programs and group tours are available by appointment.

The farm offers tours and educational programs.

The historic Lyman Estate Greenhouses, dating back to 1804, are among the oldest examples still in existence in the United States.

The greenhouses offer tours.

At the end of the 19th century, railroads opened the Berkshires, which soon became a summer destination for wealthy New Yorkers. This 1825 brick structure, which dates from the late Federal period, was purchased by William and Elizabeth Doane as a summer home in 1875. Around 1900, the Doanes doubled its size by adding a shingle-style ell and remodeled the interior of the main house. They decorated the house in an eclectic manner with European and American furnishings, much of which they collected during their extensive travels. The house was preserved by the Doanes' daughter, Vipont Merwin, who added her own memorabilia to the decorative scheme.

The house offers tours.

Coffin House chronicles the evolution of domestic life in rural New England over three centuries. The 1678 structure, which contains the family's furnishings, began as a simple dwelling built in the post-medieval style. Tristam Coffin and his family lived, cooked and slept in two or possibly three rooms; their possessions were few. About 1700, the house was more than doubled in size to provide living space for a married son and his family. As the family grew, partitions were added and lean-tos built so that different generations could continue to live together under one roof. In 1785, two Coffin brothers legally divided the structure into two separate dwellings, each with its own kitchen and living spaces. With rooms from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Coffin House depicts the impact of an expanding economy and new concepts, such as the notion of privacy, on architecture and modes of living.

The house offers tours and educational programs.

Cogswell's Grant was the summer home of Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little, preeminent collectors of American decorative arts in the mid 20th century. Through her research and innumerable publications, Mrs. Little charted new areas of American folk art (which she preferred to call "country arts"), such as decorative painting, floor coverings, boxes, and New England pottery. In 1937, the Littles purchased this 18th-century farmhouse overlooking the Essex River as a family retreat and place to entertain. They restored it carefully, trying to preserve original 18th-century finishes and carefully documenting their work. In more than 50 years of collecting, they sought works of strong, even quirky character, and in particular favored objects with their original finishes and New England histories. They decorated the house for visual delight rather than historic accuracy. The result is rich in atmosphere and crowded with collections of things—primitive paintings, redware, painted furniture, stacked Shaker boxes, weather vanes, and decoys—that have since come to define the country look.

The house offers tours.

Built on the top of a hill overlooking the Sheepscot River, Castle Tucker presents a vivid record of Wiscasset history. Judge Silas Lee built this Federal-style mansion at the peak of prosperity, when the town was the busiest port east of Boston. Lee's death in 1814, combined with the stunning effect of the Jefferson Embargo, forced his widow to sell. The house passed through a succession of hands until 1858, when Captain Richard Tucker, scion of a Wiscasset shipping family, bought the property, updated the interiors, and added a dramatic two-story porch to the front. Shortly after, he brought a shipload of fashionable furnishings from Boston and moved in with his young bride. The couple raised five children here, while Captain Tucker oversaw various business ventures including the wharves and iron foundry just below the house. In 1871, however, his fortunes collapsed. Renovations and lighthearted family entertainments gave way to subsistence farming and taking in paying guests. After Tucker's death, his daughter Jane returned from New York, bringing with her a passion for Japanese and exotic decoration. Fortunately, she, and later her niece, took an avid interest in preserving the house and contents, making few changes to the decorating schemes. Their dedication preserved Castle Tucker much as it appeared in the late 19th century.

The house offers tours and educational and recreational programs.

In 1796, young Daniel Marrett, a recent Harvard graduate, moved to Standish to become the town parson. The grand house he purchased reflected his status as the community's leading citizen. Over the years, his children and grandchildren enlarged and updated the house, but left unchanged many furnishings and interior arrangements as relics of the past. They preserved the southwest parlor exactly as it had appeared on the occasion of a family wedding in 1847. In 1889, the family celebrated the house's centennial by refurbishing several of the rooms with reproduction heirloom wallpapers and bed hangings. Today, the visitor can see the layering of eras and tastes that occurs when a family resides in one house for three generations. The Marrett sisters' extensive perennial garden, which they laid out in the 1920s and 1930s, has been restored.

The house offers tours and educational and recreational programs.

Roseland Cottage depicts the summer life of a prosperous family in mid 19th-century America. Built in 1846 in the newly fashionable Gothic Revival style, the house provided a seasonal escape from a more formal city existence for Henry Chandler Bowen and his family. Bowen, a Woodstock native, made his fortune in New York and became an active abolitionist, Congregationalist, and Republican.

The cottage offers tours and educational and recreational programs.