Gem County Historical Society and Historical Village Museum [ID]

Description

The Gem County Historical Society of Gem County, ID operates the Historical Village Museum. The museum complex contains a museum of the history of Emmett, ID; the circa 1900 cottage of the fifth governor of Idaho (1901-1903), Frank W. Hunt; the Little Red Schoolhouse; the Bunkhouse; and the Blacksmith Shop. The Hunt cottage contains its original furnishings. The Bunkhouse presents information on indigenous animal species and the local cattle and sheep industries. Topics addressed in the local history museum include Native American life, irrigation, the fruit industry, settlers, trappers, and miners. Collection highlights include a "coyote gun" and a broom maker dating to the 1880s.

The society offers exhibits, period rooms, and presentations and tours for students.

Vermont State Historical Society and Museum

Description

The Vermont State Historical Society presents the history of the state of Vermont from the days of Abenaki dominance to circa 2000. To this end, the society operates a museum and a history and genealogy research library. The Vermont History Museum's permanent exhibit depicts change over time through a series of full-size period settings, interpreting the state motto, "Freedom and Unity." Collection highlights include the document which officially admitted Vermont to the Union and shoe buckles once worn by Ethan Allen (1738-1789), who helped capture Fort Ticonderoga in 1775.

The society offers exhibits, curriculum-based guided student tours with hands-on activities, curriculum-based student educational programs, traveling trunk rentals, a lending library for educators, in-service educator training, family workshops, and research library access. Students and members may use the library free of charge. The website offers virtual exhibits, transcriptions of select manuscripts and Civil War diaries and letters, historical photographs, and lesson plans.

Faulkner County Historical Society and Museum [AR]

Description

The Faulkner County Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Faulkner County, AR. To this end, the society operates the Faulkner County Museum. Exhibits within the museum address how the people of Faulkner County, beginning with local Native Americans, have adapted their daily lives to the surrounding environment.

The society offers exhibits and guided group tours of the museum.

Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park and Chaw'se Regional Indian Museum [CA]

Description

Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park nestles in a little valley 2,400 feet above sea level with open meadows and large valley oaks that once provided the native Americans of this area with an ample supply of acorns. The park was created in 1968 and preserves a great outcropping of marbleized limestone with some 1,185 mortar holes—the largest collection of bedrock mortars in North America. The Museum has been designed to reflect the architecture of the traditional roundhouse. Exhibited in this two-story museum are outstanding examples of the technology and crafts of the Miwok and other Sierra Nevada native American groups.

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

Madeline Island Museum [WI]

Description

The Madeline Island Museum presents the history of Madeline Island, WI and its people. An original 1835 American Fur Company building contains exhibits on Ojibwe life and the mixing of Native American, British, American, and French cultures instigated by the fur trade. Other exhibits address 19th-century trades and hand tools, 19th- and early 20th-century settler life, leisure and tourism, and Protestant and Catholic missionary activity. Other structures housing exhibits include a historic jail, an 1890s barn, and a home built in memory to a drowned sailor. Collection highlights include an 1862 Fresnel lens, religious texts translated into Ojibwe, a boat winch, and a maple-sugaring kettle. The grounds also include fortifications similar to those created by the French in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The museum offers films, exhibits, lectures, workshops, group tours, student tours, educational programs for third through fifth grade students, student tours of La Pointe village, and a fur trade traveling trunk. Group tours and field trips are available by appointment only. Group tours must be scheduled for mid-June through September, and field trips are offered in May and early June. The traveling trunk is available November through March.

Fort Branch [NC]

Description

Fort Branch preserves the site of a Confederate earthwork fort, with the initial phases of construction having taken place in 1862. The fort's location permitted strategic defense of the Roanoke River, CSS Albemarle, and a railway bridge needed for supply lines. This is the only Southern earthwork fortification which possesses artillery original to the site. Sights include eight of the original 11 cannon, Native American pottery, artifacts from an 18th-century river town, a late 19th-century steam engine, and an 1850s farmhouse.

The site offers exhibits, and is open April through November.

Stately Oaks Plantation [GA]

Description

The Stately Oaks Plantation bills itself as the inspiration for Margaret Mitchell's classic Gone with the Wind and it’s easy to see why. This 19th century Southern plantation home is complete with costumed interpreters, a country store, and Civil War artifacts.

Guided or MP3 tours are available for groups as well as educational tours especially for students. Educational program topics include Native Americans and the Civil War.

Kansas State Historical Society, Archives, and Museum, Potawatomi Mission, and Stach School

Description

The Society manages and operates the state's Museum of History, which preserves and presents the history of the state. Exhibits include a Cheyenne tipi; a fully-stocked covered wagon ready for a trip on the Oregon Trail; a 1950s diner made by the Valentine Industries; and a locomotive made in 1880 for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. In the same complex, the society maintains the 1847 Potawatomi Mission, once operated as a boarding school for children of the Potawatomi Indians, and the one-room Stach School, interpreted as it was in the 1910s and 1920s.

The society offers research library access and school tours to orient middle- and high-school students to the library; the museum offers exhibits, tours (including standards-based school tours), and occasional recreational and educational events. The mission offers tours, a small exhibit on Kansas missions, and a period classroom for school groups; the Stach School offers school tours and "Rural School Days"—four-hour programs for fourth- and fifth-grade students that introduce them to student life in 1920.

Black Hawk State Historic Site and Hauberg Indian Museum

Description

Black Hawk State Historic Site commemorates Native Americans of the area, particularly the Sauk and Mesquakie (Fox) Indians, who lived here from about 1750 to 1831. The Watch Tower Lodge, built between 1934 and 1942 by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the State of Illinois, houses Works Progress Administration murals and basement "nature rooms" are available for science activities with school groups. Exhibits in the John Hauberg Museum of Native American Life depict the daily life of the Sauk and Mesquakie Indian nations. Dioramas show the four seasons with a full-sized winter house, a replica of a summer long house, an authentic dugout canoe, and other objects relating to the Sauk and Mesquakie. Another exhibit describes the importance of the fur trade to the Native Americans. Also located in the Lodge is an exhibit outlining the 1934–1942 activities of the Civilian Conservation Corps in developing Black Hawk Park. Outside the lodge is a large statue of Black Hawk executed in 1892 by sculptor David Richards. The Lodge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

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

The Museum At Warm Springs [OR]

Description

The Museum at Warms Springs is devoted to exhibiting the history of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, a Native American reservation in Oregon. The Museum rotates its exhibits once a year but focuses on showcasing the culture of the tribes, including tribal song and language, craftsmanship, and daily life.

School groups are welcome to tour the museum's gallery and its outdoor portion of the museum containing information on the museum's traditional architecture.