This museum interprets cotton agriculture in Arkansas from statehood in 1836 through World War II, when agricultural practices quickly became mechanized. Visitors can tour the restored 1920s cotton gin and see how cotton was grown, picked, and processed.
The museum offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.
Exhibits and programs tell of the industrial and social history surrounding the 'black gold rush' of Arkansas's oil fields. Visitors walk the rutted streets of a 1920s oil boom town, then go on a journey inside the earth to see formation of the oil strata. In the museum's Oil Field Park, see full-size operating equipment used from the 1920s to the modern era, including a 1920s standard oil rig and a 112-foot wooden derrick.
The site offers a short film, exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.
The Park preserves and interprets the Parkin site on the St. Francis River where a 17-acre Mississippi Period American Indian village was located from A.D. 1000 to 1550. A large platform mound on the river bank remains. There were once many archaeological sites similar to Parkin throughout this region, but they did not survive as eastern Arkansas was settled. Visitors can watch research in progress, and see firsthand the results of careful excavations and laboratory analysis. Along with including an archaeological research laboratory, the park visitor center includes an interpretive exhibit area and auditorium. The park interpretive staff offers audiovisual programs, site tours, workshops, and other educational programs and special events and activities. When archaeological excavations are underway, visitors on guided tours can observe them. Visitors experiencing Parkin Archeological State Park can also tour the circa 1910 Northern Ohio Schoolhouse. By the beginning of World War II, there were 15 one-room and two-room schoolhouses providing education for children in Parkin, a town of less than 2,000 citizens. Today, the Northern Ohio School is the only one of these early Parkin structures still standing. The stories it tells of what took place here in the early 20th century in and around the Sawdust Hill community are parts of the historic fabric of Parkin, just as is the park’s interpretation of the prehistoric village of Casqui.
The site offers exhibits, tours, workshops, and educational and recreational programs and events.
St. Joseph Lead Co. dominated ore production and became the heart of the easter Ozarks' Old Lead Belt, continuing operations in this district until 1972. In 1975, the company donated the 25 buildings of their largest mine-mill complex and the surrounding land to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. These properties became Missouri Mines State Historic Site and St. Joe State Park. The 19,000 square-foot mine-mill powerhouse has been developed into a large museum that interprets Missouri's mining history and displays old mining machinery and an outstanding mineral collection.
The site offers a short film, exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events.
Harry Truman was born in a modest frame house in Lamar, Missouri. The home has been faithfully preserved so that modern visitors can explore the home exactly as it was during the first year of Harry Truman's life. The home has no electricity or running water, and is furnished in a manner typical of the late 1800s.
The home offers guided tours. The website offers a brief history and visitor information.
Jewell Cemetery State Historic Site, Columbia, contains the grave of Missouri's 22nd governor (18751877), Charles Hardin, along with descendants of George Jewell. The most well-known member of the Jewell family buried in the cemetery, William Jewell, died while establishing a college in Liberty, MO, that bears his name.
The site is open to the public.
Website does not specify any interpretive services available at the site.
A renowned painter, sculptor, lecturer, and writer, Thomas Hart Benton had a gift for interpreting everyday life. One of his most noted murals, "A Social History of the State of Missouri," can be viewed in the House Lounge of the state Capitol. Virtually untouched since his death in 1975, the two-and-a-half story, late Victorian-style house that Benton called home was constructed of native, quarried limestone and contains simple furnishings in neutral tones that contrast Benton's vibrant paintings. Several of Benton's paintings and sculptures can be viewed in the house. Benton converted half of the carriage house into his art studio, which remains as he left it, with coffee cans full of paintbrushes, numerous paints, and a stretched canvas waiting to be transformed into another of his masterpieces.
The site offers tours.
A barn-red mill nestled among green trees beside blue waters rolling over a rock dam create the colorful setting of one of Missouri's most picturesque historic sites. Dillard Mill State Historic Site interprets one of Missouri's best-preserved, water-powered gristmills. Completed in 1908, Dillard Mill sits along Huzzah Creek and was the second mill built at that site. The first, Wisdom's Mill, built in the 1850s, was destroyed by fire in 1895. Innovations in the new, modernized mill included steel roller mills for grinding the wheat and a turbine to power the mill. For years, farmers brought their grain to the mill to be ground into flour and eventually livestock feed. The mill ceased operation in 1956. Today, most of the original machinery is still intact and operational. A turn of a wheel brings the machinery back to life during tours of the mill, which are given year-round.
The site offers tours.
Our church has a World War I service flag with 16 stars. One has a gold star. Two have gold crosses. What do the gold crosses mean?
Following America’s entrance into World War I, families of servicemen began displaying flags to show support for their sons and husbands fighting in France. According to the Blue Star Mothers of America Organization, the service flag was designed and patented by Army Captain Robert L. Queisser of the 5th Ohio Infantry, who had two sons serving in the war. (1)
Service flags were an indoor, wartime flag, generally about a foot in length and usually suspended vertically in a window for public viewing. Many of these flags were handmade from cotton or wool by mothers or spouses. Businesses and churches would sometimes display larger flags in order to recognize the service of employees or members. A blue star represented each family member in active service. In the event of a service member’s death, the blue star would either be covered or replaced with a gold star, sometimes surrounded by a laurel wreath. A gold circle signified distinguished service. Gold crosses set inside a blue star signified that a family member was wounded. A red star represented a captured or missing member. So it appears that your church’s service flag denoted 16 members serving in World War I, with one killed (gold star) and two wounded (gold crosses).
The display of service flags became extremely popular during World War II. One of the most well-known service flags served as a striking backdrop for a patriotic poster honoring the Sullivan brothers, all five of whom perished at sea with the sinking of the U.S.S. Juneau. Though the popularity of the service flag waned in the post-World War II years, it regained some of its popularity in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, Today, the Department of Defense has specific regulations for manufacturing, selling, and displaying the service flag. For example, vendors must obtain a license to manufacture the flag; its ratio of length to width must be the same as the national flag, and display of the service flag at a residence is restricted to immediate family members and only during wartime.
Kerrick, Harrison S. The Flag of the United States: Your Flag and Mine. Columbus, OH: Champlin Publishing Company, 1925.
Institute of Heraldry, Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. “Frequently Asked Questions-Service Flag and Service Lapel Button.” Accessed August 21, 2012.
According to the Library of Congress Webcasts site:
"It was a bold and brutal crime: robbery and murder in broad daylight on the streets of South Braintree, Mass., in 1920. Tried for the crime and convicted, two Italian-born laborers—anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—went to the electric chair in 1927, professing their innocence. Journalist Susan Tejada has spent years in the Library of Congress and elsewhere investigating the case, sifting through diaries and police reports and interviewing descendants of its major figures. She discovers little-known facts about Sacco, Vanzetti and their supporters, and develops a tantalizing theory about how a doomed insider may have been coerced into helping professional criminals plan the heist."