Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame [IN]

Description

The Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame presents the history of basketball within Indiana. Artifacts honor acclaimed high school, college, and professional basketball players and those who have influenced the game. The hall's museum emphasizes male and female high school coaches and players. Exhibit topics include basketball and the media, sports officials, basketball history from 1894 to present day, and the sport histories of individual Indiana high schools.

The museum offers exhibits, films, and research library access. Library access is by appointment only.

Carl Sandburg State Historic Site

Description

The Carl Sandburg State Historic Site is the birthplace of Carl Sandburg (1878-–1967), a Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet and Lincoln biographer, a children's author, and folk song collector. The small frame home, architecturally significant as a "workingman’s cottage," contains three rooms—parlor, bedroom, and kitchen. Carl Sandburg was born here January 6, 1878. Several original family items are on display, along with other simple, utilitarian furnishings typical of the era. Also on the site is a two-story Greek Revival frame house built in 1858. The house currently serves as the site visitor center. On the main floor are a small video theater, the site office, and small exhibit gallery.

The site offers exhibits, tours, a short film, and educational and recreational events.

National Rod & Custom Car Hall of Fame [OK]

Description

The National Rod & Custom Car Hall of Fame is the brainchild of Daryll Starbird, famed custom car designer. The hall of fame serves as both a museum of custom car construction and style as well as a hall of fame for the leaders of the custom car construction and design industry.

The museum offers exhibits and guided tours. The website offers visitor information, a virtual tour of the museum, and a brief biography of Darryl Starbird.

West Volusia Historical Society, Museums, and Memorial Garden [FL]

Description

The West Volusia Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of West Volusia County, Florida. To this end, the society operates the 1886 DeLand House Museum, Robert M. Conrad Research and Educational Center, the 1922 DeLand Memorial Hospital, and the Lue Gim Gong Memorial Gardens. The hospital was used for medical purposes until 1948. A separate building behind the main structure served the local African American population. The hospital addresses medical history and African American life, as well as housing collections of elephant figurines, historic toys, and military artifacts. The grounds include two gardens, one of which is devoted to offering a sensory experience for visually and physically impaired visitors. The Lue Gim Gong Memorial Gardens honor Lue Gim Gong (1860-1925), creator of a number of grapefruit and orange varieties.

The DeLand House Museum offers period rooms. The Conrad Center offers exhibits, oral histories, and a research library. The DeLand Memorial Hospital offers period rooms, exhibits, and gardens. The society also offers outreach speakers, a memorial to Lue Gim Gong, and access to his grave site.

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.

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.

Meux Home Museum [CA]

Description

The Meux House Museum is focused on preserving the beautiful Meux home, a premier architectural treasure of Fresno. The home was built in 1889 by Dr. Thomas Meux, formerly of Tennessee. The Meux family occupied the home until 1970, and now is open as a historic house museum.

The museum offers guided tours and special events. The website offers a brief biography of Dr. Meux, a brief history of the home, and visitor information.

Robert Frost Farm State Historic Site [NH]

Description

The Robert Frost Farm was home to Robert Frost and his family from 1900–1911. Frost, one of the nation's most acclaimed poets whose writings are said to be the epitome of New England, attributed many of his poems to memories from the Derry years. The simple two-story white clapboard farmhouse is typical of New England in the 1880s.

A second, individual website for the site can be found here.

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

Old Firehouse Museum [MA]

Description

The Old Firehouse Museum presents the history of South Hadley, Connecticut; local industries; and local firefighting between 1899 and 1973, the years in which the firehouse was in active use by the area fire department. Permanent exhibits include an 1890s period room and a firefighting display. Collection highlights include a 1926 Dodge Fire Engine and two 19th-century hand pumpers.

The museum offers a period room and exhibits. The website offers oral histories.

Grey Towers National Historic Landmark [PA]

Description

The 100-acre Grey Towers National Historic Landmark contains Grey Towers, summer home of Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), Pennsylvania Governor and first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. Pinchot is attributed the concepts of conservation and sustainable use. Gifford's wife Cornelia Bryce Pinchot (1881-1960) advocated women's right to vote, child labor reform, and the formation of trade unions. The structure itself was erected in 1886.

The site offers one-hour guided tours of the gardens and the residence's first floor, historic gardens, customizable field trips, environmental outreach programs for students, a 15-minute history interpretive trail, a hands-on forestry trail running less than one mile, a bluebird nestbox trail running 1/4 of a mile, conservation education programs, a trail describing types and uses of trees, and Smokey Bear and forest fire activity backpacks for use on site.