Chippokes Plantation State Park and Museum [VA]

Description

The 1,683-acre Chippokes Plantation State Park contains a working plantation site, founded circa 1619. The site's main residence is known as the Jones-Stewart Mansion. The plantation grounds house gardens and the Chippokes Farm and Forestry Museum, which presents circa 1850 Virginian farming life. Exhibits include farm building, soil preparation, planting, cultivating, harvesting, blacksmiths' tools, wheelwrights' tools, cobblers' tools, coopers' tools, farm animals, processing, preserving, small tools, and house ware. Many exhibits depict the evolution of tools used for a particular task. Collection highlights include a wooden tooth cultivator and a plow, designed to be pulled by oxen.

The park offers exhibits, mansion tours, an interpretive forestry trail, guided group museum tours, curriculum-based museum educational programs, recreational trails, outdoor activities, overnight facilities, a snack bar, and a picnic complex. Mansion tours and museum access are available April through October. Picnic shelters can be reserved. The snack bar operates Memorial Day through Labor Day. The museum can customize educational programs.

Mosby Heritage Area Association [VA]

Description

The Mosby Heritage Area Association seeks to preserve and share the history, culture, and environment of the Northern Virginia Piedmont. The association places particular emphasis on the life and travels of Confederate soldier John Singleton Mosby.

The association offers a outreach programs for students, a monthly two-hour family program, and outreach speakers.
The website offers a virtual tour, a recommended reading list for students, suggested post-visit activities, and area scavenger hunts.

Underground Gold Miners Museum [CA]

Description

The Underground Gold Miners Museum presents the history of Alleghany, California and its mining district; the Sixteen to One Mine; and area geology. Areas of focus include underground hardrock mining technology and equipment, as well as the lives of California's underground gold miners. The Sixteen to One Mine remained an active gold mine between circa 1896 and 1965.

The museum offers exhibits, and is open for special events and by appointment only.

Strawberry Banke Museum [NH]

Description

The Strawberry Banke Museum is a living history museum of one of New Hampshire’s oldest neighborhoods and its history that dates back to the 1600's. The outdoor museum contains 42 historic buildings, the earliest build in 1695, and many contain live demonstrations of craftsmanship, cooking, and other forms of daily life at work.

School groups can tour the neighborhood on their own and partake in a Time Travel Workshop that includes hands-on activities lasting about 90 minutes on a specific, curriculum-based topic. Other programs on architecture, archeology, cooking, Early America, Trade and Maritime history, and the Industrial revolution meet New Hampshire education standards for many grade levels. The site also offers programs for home-schoolers and holiday programs.

Naval Undersea Museum [WA]

Description

The Naval Undersea Museum presents information on the oceans and marine technology. Permanent exhibit topics include the physics and biological aspects of the world's oceans, torpedoes, mine warfare, civilian and military diving gear, and submarines. The museum torpedo display is the largest in the country. Collection highlights include a Confederate marine mine.

The museum offers films, audio, exhibits, hands-on activities, and speakers. Offerings for students include focus tours, art projects, construction projects, gallery tours, films, and a youth docent program.

Matheson Museum [FL]

Description

The Matheson Museum consists of four entities—the Matheson Museum, Matheson House, Tison Tool Museum, and Sweetwater Park. The Matheson Museum presents the history of Alachua County, FL. Permanent exhibits address the Timucuan; Spanish occupation; and Willam Bartram, 18th-century botanist. The 1867 Matheson House has been restored to period style. It is used to discuss the history of Gainesville, FL and the family which once owned the home. The Tilson Tool Museum presents historic tools, and honors the labor which was exerted to create Alachua County's structures. Sweetwater Park is an outdoor site which provides a brief overview of Gainesville history.

The museum offers period rooms, exhibits, guided tours, interactive tours for students, group tours, and research services. The Matheson House and Tilson Tool Museum are open by appointment only. Reservations are required for group and student tours. A fee is charged for one hour of research conducted upon request. The website offers a curriculum guide.

Eagle Island State Historic Site [ME]

Description

The Eagle Island State Historic Site preserves the summer home of Admiral Robert Peary (1856-1920), who after his 1909 expedition, claimed to be the first man to reach the geographic North Pole. The grounds contain gardens originally tended by Peary's wife, Josephine.

The site offers house tours, a hiking trail, gardens, and picnicking opportunities. The site is entirely inaccessible by wheelchair.

Jacobsburg National Historic District [PA]

Description

The Jacobsburg National Historic District preserves the site where the Henry Rifle was made, and serves as a center for environmental education. Historic buildings are open for tours. The Henrys manufactured small arms for both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, as well as being the primary firearms supplier for John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company.

The district offers educational programs for students, teacher workshops, public programs, 18.5 miles of hiking and multi-use trails, outdoor activities, living history events, gunmaking demonstrations, gunmaking and blacksmithing classes, building tours, and a picnic area. The park recommends that visitors dress in blaze orange during hunting season.

Old City Cemetery and Museums [VA]

Description

The Old City Cemetery is the oldest public cemetery in Virginia, in continuous operation since 1806. The site includes the Mourning Museum, Pest House Medical Museum, Hearse House and Cemetery Caretaker's Museum, Station House, and Chapel and Columbarium. The Station House is furnished in a circa World War I style. The Hearse House contains a circa 1900 hearse and a variety of cemetery caretaker tools. The Mourning Museum presents 19th- and 20th-century mourning attire, jewelry, and etiquette, as well as the history of coffins and embalming. Topics relevant to the site include horticulture, symbolism, ironwork, Civil War medicine, mourning practices of the Victorian era, railways, African American history, the founding of Lynchburg, women, archaeology, and local disasters. The cemetery has been in use since 1806.

The cemetery offers self-guided tours; period rooms; exhibits; Mourning Museum tours; interior tours of the Pest House, Hearse House, Station House, and Chapel; audio tours; customizable guided cemetery tours; and wayside signs. Appointments are required for interior tours of the Pest House, Hearse House, Station House, and Chapel, as well as for guided cemetery tours. The website offers lesson plans, brief descriptions of notable figures interred on site, a virtual African American history tour, and brief informative articles.