This museum interprets cotton agriculture in Arkansas from statehood in 1836 through World War II, when agricultural practices quickly became mechanized. Visitors can tour the restored 1920s cotton gin and see how cotton was grown, picked, and processed.
The museum offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.
In the 1800s, steamboats made Jacksonport a thriving river port. During the Civil War, the town was occupied by both Confederate and Union forces because of its crucial locale. Jacksonport became county seat in 1854, and construction of a stately, two-story brick courthouse began in 1869. The town began to decline in the 1880s when bypassed by the railroad. The county seat was moved in 1891 to nearby Newport, and Jacksonport's stores, wharves, and saloons soon vanished. Today the park's museums, the 1872 courthouse, the nearby Mary Woods No. 2 sternwheel paddleboat, and interpretive programs share the story of this historic river port.
The site offers tours, exhibits, and recreational and educational events.
In the late 1800s, this busy river port on the Black River was the shipping point for a large territory. In 1888, a Victorian courthouse was built here. Restored in 1970 to the architect's original plans, the courthouse today serves as a regional archive that contains some of the oldest records in Arkansas. Visitors can tour the Powhatan Courthouse, 1873 Powhatan Jail, 1840s Ficklin-Imboden House, 1888 Telephone Exchange Building, and 1880s Powhatan Male and Female Academy, a unique two-room schoolhouse, all gracing their original foundations.
The site offers tours, exhibits, and workshops.
The Park preserves and interprets the Parkin site on the St. Francis River where a 17-acre Mississippi Period American Indian village was located from A.D. 1000 to 1550. A large platform mound on the river bank remains. There were once many archaeological sites similar to Parkin throughout this region, but they did not survive as eastern Arkansas was settled. Visitors can watch research in progress, and see firsthand the results of careful excavations and laboratory analysis. Along with including an archaeological research laboratory, the park visitor center includes an interpretive exhibit area and auditorium. The park interpretive staff offers audiovisual programs, site tours, workshops, and other educational programs and special events and activities. When archaeological excavations are underway, visitors on guided tours can observe them. Visitors experiencing Parkin Archeological State Park can also tour the circa 1910 Northern Ohio Schoolhouse. By the beginning of World War II, there were 15 one-room and two-room schoolhouses providing education for children in Parkin, a town of less than 2,000 citizens. Today, the Northern Ohio School is the only one of these early Parkin structures still standing. The stories it tells of what took place here in the early 20th century in and around the Sawdust Hill community are parts of the historic fabric of Parkin, just as is the park’s interpretation of the prehistoric village of Casqui.
The site offers exhibits, tours, workshops, and educational and recreational programs and events.
The Felix Vallé State Historic Site is designed to offer visitors a rare glimpse of Missouri's French colonial past. From the historic site's website, "The site features the Felix Vallé House built in 1818 as an American-Federal style residence and mercantile store. Restored and furnished to reflect the 1830s, the home today interprets the American influence on the French community following the Louisiana Purchase." In addition to the Felix Vallé House, the historic site also features the Benjamin Shaw house and the 1792 Bauvais-Amoureux House.
The State Historic Site offers guided tours and interpretive activities, and serves as the headquarters for the Historic Preservation Field School. The website offers visitor information as well as a brief history of the site.
The Pommer-Gentner house, built in 1840, is a sterling example of high-style German neoclassicism and is furnished to reflect the earlier settlement period of the 1830s and 1840s. Behind the house, visitors will tour a period garden and a small half-timbered barn containing an exhibit of 19th-century tools. The Strehly house, built in stages from 1842 to 1869, has a traditional German vernacular front. It once contained a full-service printing company that produced a German-language newspaper. About 1857, Carl Strehly built a winery next to the house that today displays one of a few remaining carved wine casks in the Midwest. Grapevines, planted by the Strehlys in the 1850s, can still be seen running the length of the backyard. Deutschheim's varied collections of German Americana are represented by galleries of changing artifacts and photographs.
The site offers tours, exhibits, occasional recreational and educational events.
Missouri's first legislators met in the buildings of the First Missouri State Capitol State Historic Site to undertake the task of reorganizing Missouri's territorial government into a progressive state system. From June 4, 1821, to Oct. 1, 1826, heated debates of state's rights and slavery filled the rooms of the temporary Capitol. The second floor of two adjoining Federal-style brick buildings was divided and used as Senate and House chambers, an office for the governor, and a small committee room. The first floor of the Peck brothers' building housed a general store and Ruluff Peck's family residence. Chauncy Shepard operated a carpenter shop on the first floor of the adjoining building. For a nominal fee, visitors can take a guided tour through the actual restored and furnished rooms where Missouri state government was created and first practiced. The restored Peck brothers' general store and residence have been furnished as they might have looked in the early 1800s. Admission is free to the historic site's interpretive center, which offers two floors of exhibits and an orientation show.
The site offers a short film, exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events.
Mastodon State Historic Site contains an important archaeological and paleontological site—the Kimmswick Bone Bed. Bones of mastodons and other now-extinct animals were first found here in the early 1800s. The area gained fame as one of the most extensive Pleistocene Ice Age deposits in the country and attracted scientific interest worldwide. Today, the 425-acre property preserves this National Register of Historic Places site and provides recreational opportunities. A museum tells the natural and cultural story of the oldest American Indian site one can visit in the state's park system. A full-size replica of a mastodon skeleton highlights the exhibits. A picnic area, several trails, and a special-use camping area offer chances to explore the land where the lives of Native Americans and mastodons once intertwined.
The site offers exhibits, a slideshow, tours, and educational programs.
A renowned painter, sculptor, lecturer, and writer, Thomas Hart Benton had a gift for interpreting everyday life. One of his most noted murals, "A Social History of the State of Missouri," can be viewed in the House Lounge of the state Capitol. Virtually untouched since his death in 1975, the two-and-a-half story, late Victorian-style house that Benton called home was constructed of native, quarried limestone and contains simple furnishings in neutral tones that contrast Benton's vibrant paintings. Several of Benton's paintings and sculptures can be viewed in the house. Benton converted half of the carriage house into his art studio, which remains as he left it, with coffee cans full of paintbrushes, numerous paints, and a stretched canvas waiting to be transformed into another of his masterpieces.
The site offers tours.
A barn-red mill nestled among green trees beside blue waters rolling over a rock dam create the colorful setting of one of Missouri's most picturesque historic sites. Dillard Mill State Historic Site interprets one of Missouri's best-preserved, water-powered gristmills. Completed in 1908, Dillard Mill sits along Huzzah Creek and was the second mill built at that site. The first, Wisdom's Mill, built in the 1850s, was destroyed by fire in 1895. Innovations in the new, modernized mill included steel roller mills for grinding the wheat and a turbine to power the mill. For years, farmers brought their grain to the mill to be ground into flour and eventually livestock feed. The mill ceased operation in 1956. Today, most of the original machinery is still intact and operational. A turn of a wheel brings the machinery back to life during tours of the mill, which are given year-round.
The site offers tours.