Fayette Historic State Park [MI]

Description

Fayette Historic State Park houses a Historic Townsite, a representation of a once bustling industrial community. On the second Saturday of August the annual Heritage Day celebrates Fayette as a bustling iron smelting company town. Today, visitors to Fayette State Park see 19 structures including several public and commercial buildings, residences which housed the people of Fayette, and the stabilized ruins of the furnace complex. Attractions include a visitor center, museum exhibits, a 26-station walking tour, and a scale model of the original townsite.

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

Hemingway Home and Museum [FL]

Description

The Hemingway Home and Museum commemorates the life of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author and journalist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). The 1851 Spanish Colonial home served as Hemingway's personal residence for more than ten years. A Farewell to Arms was completed in Key West for publication in 1929. Many of the home furnishings and hunting trophies on display belonged to Hemingway, and the more than 60 cats are descended from his own pets. Hemingway's work is characterized by simple sentences, understatement, and stoic characters. Examples of his writings include The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

The site offers period rooms, guided tours, and an abundance of cats.

Buffalo Bill Historical Center [WY]

Description

The Buffalo Bill Historical Center contains several museums devoted to Buffalo Bill, Western art, the Plains peoples, and Greater Yellowstone. The Buffalo Bill Museum presents the life of W.F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, and his historical context in the American West. Cody (1846-1917) operated a Wild West show between 1883 and 1913, which helped to shape popular understandings of the Western frontier. The Whitney Gallery of Western Art displays major works of Western art. Artists represented in the collection include William Ranney, T.D. Kelsey (born 1946), Edgar S. Paxson (1852-1919), and Fritz Scholder (1937-2005). The Plains Indian Museum presents the history and culture of the people of the Plains. Collection strengths include the early reservation period (circa 1880-1930), the Lakota, Crow, Arapaho, Shoshone, and Cheyenne. The Cody Firearms Museum presents the world's most comprehensive collection of U.S. firearms. The Draper Museum of Natural History presents the natural history of the Greater Yellowstone area.

All sites offer exhibits. The Draper Museum of Natural History offers interactive exhibits, audio-visual elements, monthly lectures, and an interactive elementary school educational program. The center also offers research library access and research assistance. Center educational opportunities include themed guided tours for students, traveling trunks, resource kits, videos, and teacher workshops. The website offers a Plains Indian Museum virtual exhibit and Cody Firearms Museum firearms glossary and idiom listing.

The Whitney Gallery of Western Art is closed, as the site adds interpretation, situating artworks in context.

Yolo County Historical Society, Spring Lakes School, and Hattie Weber Museum [CA]

Description

The Yolo County Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Yolo County, California. To this end, the society operates the Spring Lakes School and the Hattie Weber Museum. The school is used to introduce students to education and the school experience circa 1890. The Hattie Weber Museum presents the local history of Davis, California and the surrounding areas. The museum is named after Davisville's first paid librarian, who began her career in 1906.

The society offers educational programs for students in the Spring Lakes School, and exhibits and school tours in the Hattie Weber Museum.

Hazelwood Historic House Museum [WI]

Description

The Hazelwood Historic House Museum is a Greek Revival residence furnished in the 1880 through 1899 Victorian styles. Home owner Morgan L. Martin (1805-1887) served as state convention president at the time the Wisconsin state constitution was drafted.

The museum offers house tours and neighborhood tours. Reservations are required for groups of 10 or more. Tour options include added refreshments.

Washburn-Norlands Living History Center [ME]

Description

The Washburn-Norlands Living History Center depicts 18th- and 19th-century rural life in the state of Maine. Norlands was originally the Washburn family home. This family included a Senator, Secretary of State, congressmen, governors, and founders of the Washburn-Crosby Gold Medal Flour Company. Structures include a one-room schoolhouse, mansion, meeting house, and library.

The site offers living history interpreters, period rooms, guided building tours, self-guided grounds tours, curriculum-based interactive programs for students, outreach programs for schools, hands-on activities, overnight programs, and picnic tables.

Floyd County Museum [IA]

Description

The Floyd County Museum presents historical and modern agricultural and industrial prairie life in Floyd County, Iowa. Highlights include tractors; 19th-century tools; and artifacts related to women's suffrage leader Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), founder of the League of Women Voters. Period rooms include a circa 1900 drug store setting and a country schoolroom. The collection focuses on the years 1850 through 1950. The museum is located within a historical laboratory building. Charles City, where the museum is located, is best know as the site of the first gasoline-powered tractors.

The museum offers exhibits and period rooms.