Greenbelt Museum [MD]

Description

Greenbelt was developed as a New Deal planned community in 1937. A historic house museum presents middle class life during the Great Depression and World War II. Years depicted range from 1936 to 1952. Furnishings within the interior were designed by the New Deal’s Special Skills Division. Thew New Deal, introduced by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt between 1933 and 1935, sought to offer relief to the unemployed and stimulate the economy of the Great Depression era (1929-the late 1930s or early 1940s).

The museum offers guided tours, exhibits, lectures, educational programs, self-guided walking tours, and 90-minute guided walking tours.

Kansas Oil Museum

Description

The 10-acre Kansas Oil Museum presents the history of the discovery of oil and the growth of the oil industry within the state of Kansas, as well as the history of Butler County. The site includes historical oil field equipment and a "boom town" of historic buildings. Topics addressed include G.W. Brown’s 1860s oil well, John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, the connection between geology and oil, farming, ranching, and Native American ways of life.

The museum offers exhibits, camps, tours, Scout programs, oil rig demonstrations, educational outreach programs, and research library access. Advance notice is needed for oil rig demonstrations and school tours. The website offers definitions of drilling terminology and a writing competition.

Old Cahawba [AL]

Description

From 1819 to 1826, Cahawba served as Alabama's first capital. It was once a thriving antebellum river town, a major distribution point for cotton shipped down the Alabama River to Mobile, a Confederate prison for captured Union soldiers, and a rural community of African-American families. By 1900, however, most of Cahawba's buildings had burned, collapsed, or had been dismantled. A place of picturesque ruins, Cahawba today is an important archaeological site with an extensive descendants' network.

The site offers tours, exhibits, and educational programs.

Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society [WA]

Description

The Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society seeks to preserve and share maritime history—with an emphasis on the history of Puget Sound. To this end, the society operates a research library. The library, located in the Museum of History and Industry, includes 4,500 volumes, more than 100 periodicals, 15,000 photographs of maritime vessels, and 40,000 negatives.

The society offers research library access and several exhibits hosted by other institutions. Appointments are required for library access. Exhibits are located at the Museum of History and Industry and at Chandler's Cove. The website offers videos of past speaker presentations.

Historic Stagville State Historic Site [NC]

Description

This site comprises the remains of North Carolina's largest pre-Civil War plantation and one of the South's largest. It once belonged to the Bennehan-Cameron family, whose combined holdings totaled approximately 900 slaves and almost 30,000 acres by 1860. Today, Stagville consists of 71 acres, on three tracts. On this land stand the late 18th-century Bennehan House, four rare slave houses, a pre-Revolutionary War farmer's house, a huge timber framed barn built by skilled slave craftsmen, and the Bennehan Family cemetery.

The site offers tours and occasional recreational and educational events.

Delaware Canal State Park [PA]

Description

The Delaware Canal State Park preserves the Delaware Canal. Completed in 1832, the canal was used to transport coal to Philadelphia, New York, and the eastern seaboard.

The park offers hands-on activities; guided walks; guided bicycle tours; guided digital photography hikes; outreach programs; educational programs on the watershed, the environment, and history; mule-powered barge rides; continuing professional education workshops; curriculum development assistance; and trails. The park does not rent bicycles for the tour programs. The website offers a watershed and land use curriculum.

Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum [MA]

Description

The Greek Revival Rotch-Jones-Duff House was built in 1834 for whaling merchant William Rotch, Jr. The interior is furnished to the different periods of the residence's occupation (1834-1981). The home was also occupied in turn by the Jones and Duff families, ship's agents and coal, whale oil, and oil transportation professionals. The surrounding gardens most closely reflect the period 1851 to 1935.

The museum offers period rooms, exhibits, 30-minute self-guided tours of the home, gardens, one-hour guided group tours, guided group tours with tea or a luncheon, fourth and fifth grade educational programs, lectures, and educational programs. The website offers background information for the educational programs.

Fort Bridger State Historic Site [WY]

Description

Established by Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez in 1843 as an emigrant supply stop along the Oregon Trail. It was obtained by the Mormons in the early 1850s, and then became a military outpost in 1858. Today, there are several restored historical buildings from the military time period, a reconstruction of the trading post operated by Jim Bridger, and an interpretive archaeological site containing the base of the cobble rock wall built by the Mormons during their occupation of the fort. In addition, a museum containing artifacts from the various different historical time periods is housed in the 1888 stone barracks building.

The site offers exhibits.

Hartwick Pines Logging Museum [MI]

Description

The Hartwick Pines Logging Museum, located in a stand of virgin white pine, takes visitors back to the days of the 19th-century logging industry, through a visitors' center, logging camp buildings, and forest trails—one of which leads to the 300-year-old Monarch pine.

The museum offers exhibits, tours for school groups, and occasional 1860s-period baseball games.