The Oliver House Museum [NY]

Description

The Oliver House Museum is a historic house museum, focusing on the years 1852 through 1942. The 1852 Italianate structure contains artifacts from the family who resided in the home, as well as from the Yates County Genealogical & Historical Society collections. Topics covered by exhibits include Jemima Wilkinson (1752-1819), the first U.S. woman to found a religious movement (the Universal Friends), and Native Americans.

The museum offers guided tours and unguided exploration, period rooms, and exhibits.

Reed Gold Mine [NC]

Description

Reed Gold Mine is the site of the first documented gold find in the United States. It was here in 1799 where Conrad Reed discovered a 17-pound yellow rock, which later turned out to be gold and was sold for only $3.50. From this discovery, gold mining spread gradually to nearby counties and eventually into other southern states. Sections of the mine's old underground tunnels are open for guided tours. The site includes a museum with exhibits on gold mining and several nature trails.

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

Falmouth Historical Society [MA]

Description

The Falmouth Historical Society operates a selection of museums, which preserve and share the history of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Two 18th–century houses display fine art, furniture, and other decorative arts; while exhibits discuss pre–Civil War medical practice, the 1800's whaling industry, and the life of Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929), author of "America, the Beautiful." The area surrounding the structures contains three gardens—one a Colonial–style flower garden—and a green which has been used for Colonial militia practice.

The society offers period rooms; exhibits; guided walking tours; trolley tours on maritime life and agricultural life; hands-on children's activities; and archives, including maritime log books.

Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site [TX]

Description

Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site features the modest two-story frame house in the railroad town of Denison where Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in 1890. Eisenhower's father worked for the railroad and the birthplace contains family possessions and period antiques demonstrating the lifestyle of a late 19th-century working family. The site includes six acres of scenic woods and creek bottomland intersected by an abandoned rail track turned into a hiking path. The visitor center is a historic structure filled with hundreds of items relating to Eisenhower and his role in U.S. and world history.

The site offers exhibits and tours.

Stumptown Historical Society [MT]

Description

The Stumptown Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of the Flathead Valley and Whitefish, Montana. The society operates a museum, housed within a working railway depot, built 1927. Collections include railroad and community artifacts.

The museum offers exhibits, and the website contains a number of historical photographs.

Historic St. Mary's City [MD]

Description

Historic St. Mary's City presents the first capital of Maryland and fourth permanent British New World settlement via living history interpretation. Sites include the reconstructed 1676 State House, the square-rigger Maryland Dove, a working tobacco plantation, and a Yaocomaco Native American settlement. St. Mary's is an early example of government supported freedom of religion.

The museum offers exhibits, interpretive signage, an audio tour, self-guided tours, four hour school tours which complement state educational standards, hands-on activities, and picnic areas. Reservations are required for school and group tours. The website offers a virtual tour and children's activities.

Historic Charleston Foundation, Nathaniel Russell House, and Aiken-Rhett House [SC]

Description

The Foundation maintains two historic houses, the Nathaniel Russell House and the Aiken-Rhett House. Set amid spacious formal gardens, the 1808 Nathaniel Russell House is widely recognized as one of America's most important neoclassical dwellings. The house is furnished with period antiques and works of art that evoke the gracious lifestyle of the city's merchant elite. Today the Nathaniel Russell House interprets the lives of the Russell family, as well as the African-American slaves and artisans who were responsible for maintaining one of the South's grandest antebellum townhouses. The Aiken-Rhett House stands alone as the most intact townhouse complex showcasing urban life in antebellum Charleston. Built in 1818 and greatly expanded by Governor and Mrs. William Aiken, Jr. in the 1830s and 1850s, the house has survived virtually unaltered since 1858.

The foundation offers occasional recreational and educational events; the Nathaniel Russell House offers tours; the Aiken-Rhett House offers tours.

Coronado State Monument [NM]

Description

Coronado State Monument where Francisco Vásquez de Coronado—with 300 soldiers and 800 Indian allies from New Spain—entered the valley while looking for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. Instead he found villages inhabited by prosperous native people. Coronado's party camped near the Tiwa pueblo of Kuaua, one of the many villages encountered by the explorers. Kuaua, a Tiwa word for "evergreen," was first settled around AD 1300 by American Indians who had long known about the fertile land near the Rio Grand. Kuaua is an earthen pueblo excavated in the 1930s by WPA workers, who also reconstructed new ruin walls over the reburied original ruins. A square kiva, excavated in the south plaza of the community, contained many layers of mural paintings. These murals represent some of the finest examples of Pre-Columbian mural art in the United States. Both the kiva and one of the mural layers are reconstructed and open to visitors, while several of the preserved mural segments are open to viewing in the mural room of the visitor center. The visitor center, designed by noted architect John Gaw Meem, also contains prehistoric and historic Indian and Spanish colonial artifacts on exhibit with several hands-on components.

A second website, maintained by the Friends of Coronado, can be found here.

The site offers a short film, exhibits, lectures, workshops, and occasional recreational and educational events.