National Museum of the Pacific War [TX]

Description

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents the history of World War II's Pacific Theater. The museum offers a secondary museum, the Admiral Nimitz Museum; the George Bush exhibit gallery; plaques commemorating all U.S. presidents who served in World War II; a memorial courtyard; a traditional Japanese garden given to the U.S. by Japanese military leaders; and the Pacific Combat Zone. The Admiral Nimitz Museum chronicles the life of Chester Nimitz (1885-1966), a key leader in the Pacific Campaign. The Pacific Combat Zone allows visitors to sit on an aircraft carrier, visit a South Pacific PT boat base, experience the sounds of combat, and view a medical unit. Outdoor artifacts include both Allied and Japanese aircraft, tanks, and large-scale artillery.

The museum offers exhibits; guided tours of the Pacific Combat Zone exhibit; traveling trunks; living history programs, guided tours, self-guided tours, and outreach presentations by living history actors and veterans for students; memorials; a garden; and archive access. The website offers a Pacific Theater history animated video.

The George Bush Gallery is closed for renovation. The rest of the museum remains accessible.

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza [TX]

Description

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza presents information pertinent to the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Evidence following the event pinpointed the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository, now the site of the museum, as the location from which the bullets were fired. Exhibits address the investigation, national and world responses, the time period, the legacy of Kennedy and of the event, and Kennedy's trip to Texas. Collections include more than 35,000 artifacts and 600 oral history interviews.

The museum offers more than 45 minutes of documentary films, exhibits, self-guided tours, audio guides, educational programs for students, teacher workshops, and a research center. Appointments are necessary to utilize the research center, and reservations are required for all groups of 20 or more. The audio guides include news excerpts and the voices of reporters, police officers, and witnesses; and the audio guide is available in English, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and a youth version. The museum also offers wheelchairs for use on site, and transcriptions of the audio guide content. The website offers a student gallery guide.

Madeline Island Museum [WI]

Description

The Madeline Island Museum presents the history of Madeline Island, WI and its people. An original 1835 American Fur Company building contains exhibits on Ojibwe life and the mixing of Native American, British, American, and French cultures instigated by the fur trade. Other exhibits address 19th-century trades and hand tools, 19th- and early 20th-century settler life, leisure and tourism, and Protestant and Catholic missionary activity. Other structures housing exhibits include a historic jail, an 1890s barn, and a home built in memory to a drowned sailor. Collection highlights include an 1862 Fresnel lens, religious texts translated into Ojibwe, a boat winch, and a maple-sugaring kettle. The grounds also include fortifications similar to those created by the French in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The museum offers films, exhibits, lectures, workshops, group tours, student tours, educational programs for third through fifth grade students, student tours of La Pointe village, and a fur trade traveling trunk. Group tours and field trips are available by appointment only. Group tours must be scheduled for mid-June through September, and field trips are offered in May and early June. The traveling trunk is available November through March.

Colonial Williamsburg [VA]

Description

Colonial Williamsburg is the world's single largest living history museum. It consists of the reconstructed 18th-century British outpost of Williamsburg, VA. Through costumed interpreters and structures furnished to period, the museum shares the story of America and its people—Native American, African American, Caucasian, enslaved, indentured, and free—circa 1699 through 1780. The historic area includes political and residential sites, trade skill settings, a plantation, gardens, and animal breeds of circa 200 years ago. Museums on site include the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.

The site offers exhibits, period rooms, living history interpreters, demonstrations, walking tours, dramatic performances, military exercises, fife and drum parades, ghost walks, mock witch trials, films, lectures, music programs, reenactments, a teacher institute in early American history, children's activities, curriculum-based tours for students, museum tours, conferences, forums, workshops, concession stands, and several dining locations with period-inspired food. The website offers audio tours, a virtual tour, virtual exhibits, information on historical structures and people, information on aspects of daily life, recipes, electronic field trips, lesson plans, teaching resources for purchase, slide shows, videos, audio clips, a daily vocabulary feature, podcasts, blogs, activities and games, and journal excerpts

Fort Mose Historic State Park [FL]

Description

The power politics of 18th-century England and Spain reached across the Atlantic to the Florida frontier. In 1738, the Spanish governor of Florida chartered Fort Mose as a settlement for freed Africans who had fled slavery in the British Carolinas. When Spain ceded Florida to Britain in 1763, the inhabitants of Fort Mose migrated to Cuba. Although nothing remains of the fort, the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 for its importance in American history.

The park offers tours.

Ships of the Sea Museum [GA]

Description

The Ships of the Sea Museum presents the history of 18th- and 19th-century Atlantic maritime trade and travel between England and America. The museum is located within the 1819 Greek Revival Scarbrough House, historic home of the president of the Savannah Steamship Company. Exhibits topics include vessel models, maritime art, steamships, scrimshaw, the Civil War, and shipbuilding. The garden design is based on 19th-century parlor gardens. The gardens include Savannah's historic official federal weather station.

The museum offers exhibits, gardens, educational programs for students, and Scout activities.

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).

Junipero Serra Museum [CA]

Description

The Junípero Serra Museum is one of the most familiar landmarks in San Diego. As a major symbol of the city, it stands atop the hill recognized as the site where California began. It was here in 1769 that a Spanish Franciscan missionary, Father Junípero Serra, with a group of soldiers led by Gaspar de Portolá, established Alta California's first mission and presidio (fort). On July 16, 1769, near the site where the museum now stands, Serra founded the Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Often confused for the Mission, the Serra Museum was built between 1928–1929 for the purpose of housing and showcasing the collection of the San Diego Historical Society, which was founded in 1928. The structure was designed by architect, William Templeton Johnson, using Spanish Revival architecture, to resemble the early missions that once dominated the landscape of Southern California.

The museum offers exhibits, tours, and educational programs.

Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site [LA]

Description

Fort St. Jean Baptiste was established by the French in 1716 to prevent the Spanish in Texas from entering French Louisiana. The fort proved crucial to trade among the French, Spanish, and local Native Americans. In 1762, with the loss of the French and Indian War, France ceded the Louisiana Territory to Spain. Initially used for trade purposes, the fort was eventually abandoned by the Spanish as it lacked an obvious military purpose. The historic site contains a reconstruction of the fort.

The site offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, and a picnic site.