Henry B. Plant Museum [FL]

Description

The Museum interprets the turn-of-the-century Tampa Bay Hotel, an 1891 railroad resort, and the lifestyles of America's Gilded Age. Through educational exhibits and events, the museum takes visitors back to the late Victorian period, the beginnings of Florida's tourist industry, and the early years of the city of Tampa. This Victorian palace features Moorish revival architecture, European furniture, and art treasures of the original railroad resort.

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

Woodside Store [CA]

Description

D.O. Tripp and Mathias Parkhurst built the Woodside Store in 1854. Early customers included loggers chopping down the redwoods. Dr. Tripp sold them everything from work boots and ax handles to flour and ham. When farmers settled in the area, the Woodside Store served as their county store, post office, and community center until 1909. Today, visitors can browse the shelves of the Woodside Store, restored to its 1880s appearance, and see the goods available in the mid-to-late 1800s—from canned fruit and frying pans to nails and sewing machines.

The store offers exhibits, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Museum of the Moving Image [NY]

Description

The Museum advances the public understanding and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media. It does so by collecting, preserving, and providing access to moving-image related artifacts; screening significant films and other moving-image works; presenting exhibitions of artifacts, artworks, and interactive experiences; and offering educational and interpretive programs to students, teachers, and the general public.

The museum offers exhibits, tours, film screenings, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Mission Mill Museum [OR]

Description

Mission Mill Museum interprets the history of the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill which produced wool products from 1889 to 1962 and represents one of Oregon's earliest and strongest industries. Mission Mill also interprets the history of Jason Lee's Methodist Mission to Oregon which settled in the Willamette Valley in 1834 before the major Oregon Trail migrations. The missionaries brought formal education, industry, and large scale agriculture and advocated for U.S. government in the Oregon country. The Museum preserves Mission houses; an Oregon Trail settler's house; a historic church; and the structures, equipment, and original water-powered turbine of the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill with related artifacts. The museum's two histories are shared with visitors through individual and group tours, interpretation, speakers, living history, children's programs, hands-on activities, and special events.

The museum offers exhibits, tours, workshops, educational programs, and recreational and educational events.

Custom House [NY]

Description

Sag Harbor became a United States port of entry in 1789, with a growing population involved in servicing whalers, coasters, and West Indian trade ships. The Custom House was owned by Sag Harbor's first United States Custom Master, Henry Packer Dering. The daily activities of Dering, his wife, and nine children are vividly portrayed in the room settings of a formal dinner, office, children's room, kitchen, pantry, and laundry.

The house offers tours and educational programs.

Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary [VA]

Description

The Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum, one of the oldest pharmacies in the nation, exists today to promote a greater understanding of historic public health issues; inspire people with the values of Quaker founder, Edward Stabler; and engage the visitor in an appreciation of local and national history by sharing the story of this business and family's profound effect on the community in such diverse areas as education and the abolition of slavery.

The site offers exhibits.

Crater of Diamonds State Park [AR]

Description

In 1906, John Huddleston, the local farmer who owned this property, found the first diamonds here in Murfreesboro, AR, and started the diamond mining rush. After a series of ill-fated mining ventures followed by tourist attractions, the site became an Arkansas state park in 1972. Visitors today are invited to prospect in the park's diamond search area, a 37-acre plowed field that is the eroded surface of an ancient volcanic pipe that, 95 million years ago, brought to the surface the diamonds and some of the semiprecious stones lucky visitors find here today. Within the park boundary many remnants of old mining ventures remain including the Mine Shaft Building, the Guard House, mining plant foundations, old mining equipment, and smaller artifacts. Nowhere else is North American diamond mining history as evident or as well-preserved as here.

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

Fort Owen State Park [MT]

Description

Fort Owen's adobe and log remains preserve the site of the first permanent white settlement in Montana. Major John Owen established the fort as a regional trade center in 1850 and period furnishings and artifacts are displayed in the restored rooms of the east barracks. In 30 minutes, visitors can browse through a small museum housed in preserved and partially reconstructed structures.

The site offers exhibits and occasional recreational and educational events.

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace [RI]

Description

The Birthplace serves as a showplace for reproductions of the works of one of America's foremost portrait painters and as an authentically restored and furnished workingman's home and the site of the first snuff mill in America. The wooded homestead on the banks of the Mattatuxet Brook also features a partially restored grist mill and a fish ladder. In spring the ladder is packed with migrating herring, swimming furiously to reach the pond above the mill dam. The grist mill houses the original fine-grained granite stones used to grind corn for the famous Rhode Island Johnny Cakes.

The site offers tours and occasional recreational and educational events.

North Carolina Transportation Museum

Description

Visitors to the Museum discover the people and machines that have moved North Carolina. Located on the site of Southern Railway's former steam locomotive repair facility Spencer Shops, this is where locomotives that hauled Southern's passenger trains and freight trains filled with North Carolina furniture, textiles, tobacco, and produce were serviced from 1896 to the late 1970s. Up to 3,000 people once worked here but today visitors can see an authentic train depot, antique automobiles, and a roundhouse with 25 locomotives.

A second website for the museum, operated by the Friends of the Museum, can be found here.

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