Strawberry Banke Museum [NH]

Description

The Strawberry Banke Museum is a living history museum of one of New Hampshire’s oldest neighborhoods and its history that dates back to the 1600's. The outdoor museum contains 42 historic buildings, the earliest build in 1695, and many contain live demonstrations of craftsmanship, cooking, and other forms of daily life at work.

School groups can tour the neighborhood on their own and partake in a Time Travel Workshop that includes hands-on activities lasting about 90 minutes on a specific, curriculum-based topic. Other programs on architecture, archeology, cooking, Early America, Trade and Maritime history, and the Industrial revolution meet New Hampshire education standards for many grade levels. The site also offers programs for home-schoolers and holiday programs.

Starr Family Home State Historic Site [TX]

Description

Starr Family Home State Historic Site preserves the 150-year-old history of the Starr family in Texas and four generations of adaptations to the site by successive family members. Maplecroft, the centerpiece of the park, was built in the 1870s. Over the years, the home was modified, modernized, and enlarged to accommodate the changing lifestyles of its occupants. Among the innovations was the installation of a carbide gas lighting system. Today, visitors can tour the stately home with the Starr's furnishings and see the nearby outbuildings.

The site offers tours.

Jarrell Plantation Historic Site [GA]

Description

The Jarrell Plantation Historic Site is a historic cotton plantation. The main plantation residence was built in 1847, and many of the furnishings within are those made by the original owner, John Fitz Jarrell. Jarrell's descendants later transitioned the plantation's industry to wood products.

The site offers period rooms, tours, and summer camps.

George Ranch Historical Park [TX]

Description

The George Ranch Historical Park presents living history interpretation of the history of Fort Bend County, Texas and neighboring areas. The site consists of a 23,000-acre working ranch, which interprets the periods between 1824 and circa 1940. Sites include the 1830s Jones Stock Farm, 1860s Ryon Prairie Home, a sharecropper's farm, chuck wagon camp, blacksmith shop, the 1890s Davis Victorian Mansion, a family cemetery in use between the 1820s and 1916, and the 1930s George Ranch House.

The park offers period rooms; hands-on activities; guided group tours; self-guided tours; 11 educational program options for students, including two role-playing programs; a homeschool day program; demonstrations; home tours; living history interpreters; period lunches; a tram; and a cafe. Groups desiring guided tours must include at least 15 individuals. Meal options are available for groups.

Oak Creek Historical Society and Museum [WI]

Description

The Oak Creek Historical Society operates a museum complex. The complex includes the 1840s Hughes Log Cabin, which depicts Wisconsin pioneer life; an 1890 summer kitchen, displaying the history of textile cleaning techniques; the 1874 Oak Creek Town Hall; an 1886 blacksmith shop; a farm shed with farming implements from the 1830s through 1950s; and a print shop.

The society offers period rooms, exhibits, and guided tours.

Hearst San Simeon State Historic Monument and Castle [CA]

Description

La Cuesta Encantada, "The Enchanted Hill" high above the ocean at San Simeon, was the creation of two extraordinary individuals, William Randolph Hearst and architect Julia Morgan. Their collaboration, which began in 1919 and continued for nearly 30 years, transformed an informal hilltop campsite into the world-famous Hearst Castle—a 115-room main house plus guesthouses, pools, and eight acres of cultivated gardens. The main house itself, "La Casa Grande," is a grand setting for Hearst's collection of European antiques and art pieces. It was also a most fitting site for hosting the many influential guests who stayed at Hearst's San Simeon ranch. Guests included President Calvin Coolidge, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Lindbergh, Charlie Chaplin, and a diverse array of luminaries from show business and publishing industries.

The site offers exhibits, tours, a 40-min. film, living history presentations, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Levine Museum of the New South [NC]

Description

The Levine Museum of the New South presents the history and culture of the New South, the Southern United States after 1865. At the beginning of this period, southerners were forced to determine new ways of life, as the institution of slavery, so long a major component of the economy, had been abolished. The museum's permanent exhibit uses the Charlotte area to describe the development of the South after the end of the Civil War. The interactive exhibit includes six experiential environments, as well as oral histories, film, music, and more than 1,000 artifacts.

The museum offers interactive exhibits, self-guided tours, guided exhibit tours, guided walking tours, curriculum-based programs for students, traveling trunks, outreach programs, discussions, and lectures. Reservations are required for all group tours or programs, and must be made at least two weeks in advance.

Levittown Historical Society and Museum [NY]

Description

The Levittown Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Levittown, NY. To this end, the society operates the Levittown History Museum. Artifacts on exhibit include furnishings and appliances dating to the late 1940s. Levittown was established in 1947 as a low-cost community with mass-produced housing available to veterans. It subsequently served as the model for countless post-World War II suburban neighborhoods.

The museum offers period rooms and guided tours. Guided tours are available by appointment only.

San Diego Air and Space Museum [CA]

Description

The Museum provides visitors with a journey through the history of flight. Visitors may stand beneath a model of the Montgolfier brothers' hot air balloon of 1783—the first manned vehicle in recorded history to lift man above the Earth. They can view specimens of aircraft from World War I, or marvel at the antics of the barnstormers of the 1920s. Mint condition aircraft help visitors appreciate the increasingly complex technology represented in the classic military aircraft of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and exhibits on space flight project aeronautics into the future.

The museum offers exhibits, tours, research library access, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.

John G. Neihardt State Historic Site [NE]

Description

Visitors to this site can discover the story of John G. Neihardt, Nebraska's Poet Laureate and author of Black Elk Speaks. John G. Neihardt called Bancroft, Nebraska home from 1900 to 1920. Visitors can see the study where the famous poet wrote many of his works or visit the interpretive center and walk in the Sioux Prayer Garden. Among the many objects on exhibit in the memorial room are items Lakota Holy Man Black Elk gave to Neihardt over the course of their friendship, including the sacred hoop of the world, a drum, and a pipe. The Neihardt Center has a library of secondary sources exploring Neihardt's life and legacy available to researchers for inhouse use.

The site offers exhibits, tours, research library access, and occasional recreational and educational events.