Cobblestone Society Museum [NY]

Description

The Cobblestone Society Museum is an outdoor history museum complex. An 1834 cobblestone church, 1836 parsonage, 1849 school, 1922 blacksmith shop, 1875 working printshop, 1838 harness shop, 1855 farming and agriculture exhibit hall, and a research library are located on site. The printshop, harness shop, and exhibit buildings originally served other functions. The dates indicate when the building was erected.

The museum offers period rooms, exhibits, demonstrations, tours, and research library access. Tours are by appointment May through October.

Caldwell Heritage Museum [NC]

Description

The Caldwell Heritage Museum presents the history of Caldwell County, NC. Collections include medical, musical, and military artifacts, as well as historic cameras. Permanent exhibits detail county history from pre-colonial times to present day. Exhibit topics include local Native Americans, pioneers and the Revolutionary War, county formation, the Civil War, the fire department, railroads, furniture and industries, the military, children's lives, vernacular tools, local schools, and Davenport College. The museum is located within the final Davenport College structure. The college offered higher education opportunities to women between 1855 and 1933.

The museum offers exhibits and a reading and listening room. If local schools are closed, dismissed early, or have delayed openings due to weather, the museum schedule will be altered for the day.

Western Heritage Center [MT]

Description

The Western Heritage Center seeks to share the human history of the Yellowstone River Valley and the Northern Plains. The center ventures to do so through all relevant perspectives, including those of Native Americans, U.S. military men, Asians, Africans, Europeans, Russians, and French trappers. Permanent exhibits include the artistic works of J.K. Ralston (1896-1987), his studio cabin, and an overview of Montana's Native American tribes. The latter exhibit presents Crow and Northern Cheyenne oral histories gathered by the center. The site is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.

The museum offers exhibits, period rooms, student tours of exhibits, museum and historic site tours for a wide variety of groups, archive access, monthly presentations, traveling exhibits, and traveling trunks. Archive access is by appointment only. The website offers a virtual exhibit.

Chenango County Historical Society Museum [NY]

Description

The Chenango County Historical Society Museum presents the local history of Chenango County, NY. The museum is housed within the 1892 Ward School No. 2. Exhibits address Native American life, railways, the Chenango Canal, china, glassware, military history, costume, Victorian life, pioneer life, and local craft and medical trades. The site also includes an 1800 through 1850 period room and an 1854 schoolhouse.

The museum offers exhibits, a period room, research library access, and research assistance. The schoolhouse is open by request. Please call in cases of severe weather to ascertain that the museum is open. A fee is charged for genealogical research conducted upon request. Advance notice is requested for library use.

Willa Cather State Historic Site [NE]

Description

Willa Cather, Nebraska's Pulitzer Prize-winning author, spent her formative years in Red Cloud. Many of the scenes and characters in her writings are based on the people, streets, and landscapes Cather encountered here in her youth. Visitors to the site encounter eight period structures that influenced her writing, including her childhood home; the Catholic and Episcopal churches; the Garber Bank; the Burlington Depot; and the Pavelka Farmstead, home of Annie Pavelka, the basis for the title character of Cather's most famous novel, My Antonia.

A second website for the site, maintained by the Cather Foundation, can be found here.

The site offers exhibits, tours, research library access, and occasional recreational and educational events.

Gem County Historical Society and Historical Village Museum [ID]

Description

The Gem County Historical Society of Gem County, ID operates the Historical Village Museum. The museum complex contains a museum of the history of Emmett, ID; the circa 1900 cottage of the fifth governor of Idaho (1901-1903), Frank W. Hunt; the Little Red Schoolhouse; the Bunkhouse; and the Blacksmith Shop. The Hunt cottage contains its original furnishings. The Bunkhouse presents information on indigenous animal species and the local cattle and sheep industries. Topics addressed in the local history museum include Native American life, irrigation, the fruit industry, settlers, trappers, and miners. Collection highlights include a "coyote gun" and a broom maker dating to the 1880s.

The society offers exhibits, period rooms, and presentations and tours for students.

Garfield Farm and Inn Museum [IL]

Description

The 281-acre Garfield Farm and Inn Museum consists of a farmstead and teamster inn, both of which date to the 1840s. The museum presents information on historic farming practices, the prairie environment, daily life, innkeeping, and transportation.

The museum offers tours, 90-minute student building tours, 90-minute student prairie tours, seminars, monthly prairie walks, outreach slide lectures, high school internships, and a summer camp. Appointments are required October through May.

Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park and Chaw'se Regional Indian Museum [CA]

Description

Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park nestles in a little valley 2,400 feet above sea level with open meadows and large valley oaks that once provided the native Americans of this area with an ample supply of acorns. The park was created in 1968 and preserves a great outcropping of marbleized limestone with some 1,185 mortar holes—the largest collection of bedrock mortars in North America. The Museum has been designed to reflect the architecture of the traditional roundhouse. Exhibited in this two-story museum are outstanding examples of the technology and crafts of the Miwok and other Sierra Nevada native American groups.

The park offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational events.