Mammoth Spring State Park [AR]

Description

Mammoth Spring, the 10th largest spring in the world, and a National Natural Landmark, flows nine million gallons of water each hour. Following the Civil War, this immense water source attracted industrialists who built a gristmill, and later, a dam here. Next, the investors opened large roller mills and a shoe factory. Soon after, the railroad arrived. Still standing near the spring is the charming 1886 Frisco Depot. At the dam, you can walk through the 1925 power plant that brought electricity to the region long before most other rural areas.

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

Cornwall Iron Furnace [PA]

Description

Cornwall Furnace is a unique survivor of the early American iron industry. Originally built by Peter Grubb in 1742, the furnace underwent extensive renovations in 1856–57 under its subsequent owners, the Coleman family, and closed in 1883. It is this mid-19th-century ironmaking complex which survives today. At Cornwall, furnace, blast equipment, and related buildings still stand as they did over a century ago. Here visitors can explore the rambling Gothic Revival buildings where cannons, stoves, and pig iron were cast, and where men labored day and night to satisfy the furnace's appetite for charcoal, limestone, and iron ore.

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

Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park [AR]

Description

Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park is recognized as one of America's most intact Civil War battlefields. The park has a museum and a collection of early Ozark buildings to tour, and interprets the effects of the Civil War on the civilian population in this area. The park protects the battle site and interprets the Battle of Prairie Grove, where on December 7, 1862, the Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi clashed with the Union Army of the Frontier in a day of fierce fighting.

The site offers exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum [NY]

Description

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum honors Major League and Negro League players, umpires, managers, and executives who have excelled within the sport of baseball. The museum focuses on the evolution of baseball as a U.S. sport and the ways in which the game has impacted the greater national culture. Exhibits include inductee plaques, artifacts related to the inductees, changes in the sport over time, Babe Ruth, women's connection to baseball, no-hitters, African Americans and baseball, baseball in the Caribbean Basin, youth league champions, baseball cards, recent events, baseball in film, sports journalism, ballparks and ballpark music, current records, and World Series moments of note. Collection highlights include a ticket booth from Yankee Stadium. The museum's research library claims more than 2,600,000 documents.

The museum offers a 13-minute introductory multimedia presentation, exhibits, curriculum-based educational programs, distance learning opportunities for students, summer educational programs, education ambassadors, teacher workshops, children's overnight programs, Scout programs, and research library access. Appointments, made at least one week in advance, are encouraged for library use. Student educational program topics include women's history, industrial technology, fine art, labor history, cultural diversity, economics, civil rights, and popular culture, among other options. The website offers online exhibits, thematic education units, electronic fieldtrips, and podcasts.

Ogeechee Canal Museum & Nature Center

Description

The Ogeechee Canal Museum and Nature Center showcases a 19th century Southern canal built in 1930. The canal was an important mean of transporting lumber, cotton, rice, bricks, guano, naval stores, and peaches until the advent of the railroad in America.

The site offers guided trail walks that focus on canal history, ecology, or wildlife. Living history programs on canal workers or 19th century schooling are also offered. Two hands-on Outdoor Classroom programs are available that teach about canal archeology and construction.

Colonel Davenport Historical Foundation [IL]

Description

The Colonel Davenport Historical Foundation maintains the Federal-style 1833 house of George Davenport, a colonel in the US Army. The house was built as an outpost for the US government in the process of expanding and exploring the West. Davenport spent time as a fur-trader while living in the home and the site's interpretation reflects the home's settler history.

The museum offers guided tours by trained docents for school groups. The site also offers a travelling trunk filled with pre-visit activities for use a week before a field trip.

North West Company Fur Post [MN]

Description

The North West Company Fur Post is a living history museum interpreting fur trading in the year 1804. That year, a trader from the North West Company erected a winter trading post on site. From there he conducted business with the Ojibwe before moving on again in late April. Topics addressed include Ojibwe culture, changes in Ojibwe culture which occurred after European contact, European barter systems, the fur trade and the global economy, trader life, women in the fur trade, communication between cultures, and archaeology. As the site is a reconstruction, it permits visitors a hands-on experience.

The post offers interactive exhibits, living history interpreters, period skill demonstrations, day camps, guided group tours, field trip programs, nature trails, interpretive signs, canoeing opportunities, and a picnic shelter. Field trips include a guided tour, an educational game, a fire making demonstration, and a craft activity. Canoes are not available on site. The website offers history articles.

Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park [CA]

Description

Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park secures for the people and makes available for their observation, inspiration, and enjoyment, the gold discovery site and its environs as an accurate portrayal of the story that unfolded at the time of the discovery and Gold Rush. The park's interpretive program primarily embraces the period from 1847 through 1852, but also shows the town of Coloma as it developed. Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park is the place where James W. Marshall found flecks of gold in the tailrace of the sawmill he was building for himself and John Sutter. This discovery in 1848 changed the course of California's and the nation's history. Visitors can see a replica of the original sawmill and over 20 historic buildings including mining, house, school, and store exhibits. Visitors have the opportunity to try panning for gold in the American River and enjoy hikes and picnics under the riparian oak woodlands. Overlooking the river canyon, where the gold discoverer rests today, visitors ca see California's first historic monument, the statue of James Marshall pointing at his gold discovery site .

The park offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, living history events, and other recreational and educational events.

Fort Toulouse / Fort Jackson State Historic Site [AL]

Description

History is alive and outside at Fort Toulouse-Fort Jackson. Here Native Americans, Spanish explorers, French soldiers, English and Scottish traders, American settlers, and modern archaeologists have all left their mark. Frequent living history events showcase a recreated 1751 French fort, recreated Creek Indian houses, and the partially restored 1814 American Fort Jackson. A 3,000-year-old Mississipian Indian mound, the William Bartram Nature Trail, and an early 19th-century house weave even more strands into this colorful tapestry of Alabama's earliest days.

Two other websites for the site exist: a second general website here and a website for the site's living history programs here.

The site offers exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).

Newport Restoration Foundation: Rough Point, Whitehorne House, and Prescott Farm [RI]

Description

The Foundation maintains and operates historical sites throughout Newport, including Rough Point, the Whitehorne House, and Prescott Farm. Frederick W. Vanderbilt built the English Manorial house Rough Point in 1889 on a dramatic, windswept promontory on Newport's Cliff Walk, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The Whitehorne House, housed in a Federal period mansion, features some of the best examples of Newport and Rhode Island furniture from the late 18th century. Prescott Farm offers the visitor a glimpse of early New England buildings and landscape. The farm buildings and land trace their origins to the early 18th century.

The foundation offers tours; Rough Point offers exhibits and tours; the Whitehorne House offers tours; Prescott Farm offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.