The Apex Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Apex, NC. To this end, the society offers information on historical rural life. This information is located within the Maynard-Pearson House, which dates to the 1870s.
The society offers exhibits, walking tours for students, educational sessions, and tours of the Maynard-Pearson House.
The Buffalo Bill Historical Center contains several museums devoted to Buffalo Bill, Western art, the Plains peoples, and Greater Yellowstone. The Buffalo Bill Museum presents the life of W.F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, and his historical context in the American West. Cody (1846-1917) operated a Wild West show between 1883 and 1913, which helped to shape popular understandings of the Western frontier. The Whitney Gallery of Western Art displays major works of Western art. Artists represented in the collection include William Ranney, T.D. Kelsey (born 1946), Edgar S. Paxson (1852-1919), and Fritz Scholder (1937-2005). The Plains Indian Museum presents the history and culture of the people of the Plains. Collection strengths include the early reservation period (circa 1880-1930), the Lakota, Crow, Arapaho, Shoshone, and Cheyenne. The Cody Firearms Museum presents the world's most comprehensive collection of U.S. firearms. The Draper Museum of Natural History presents the natural history of the Greater Yellowstone area.
All sites offer exhibits. The Draper Museum of Natural History offers interactive exhibits, audio-visual elements, monthly lectures, and an interactive elementary school educational program. The center also offers research library access and research assistance. Center educational opportunities include themed guided tours for students, traveling trunks, resource kits, videos, and teacher workshops. The website offers a Plains Indian Museum virtual exhibit and Cody Firearms Museum firearms glossary and idiom listing.
The Whitney Gallery of Western Art is closed, as the site adds interpretation, situating artworks in context.
Kensington Mansion is an 1854 Italianate Revival residence furnished with Victorian decorative arts. The grounds include the original kitchen building. Jacob Stroyer's (1848-1909) biography My Life in the South, published in 1879, described his time as a slave on Headquarters Plantation, site of Kensington Manor.
The mansion offers period rooms and guided tours. Reservations are required for groups of 10 or more.
The Washburn-Norlands Living History Center depicts 18th- and 19th-century rural life in the state of Maine. Norlands was originally the Washburn family home. This family included a Senator, Secretary of State, congressmen, governors, and founders of the Washburn-Crosby Gold Medal Flour Company. Structures include a one-room schoolhouse, mansion, meeting house, and library.
The site offers living history interpreters, period rooms, guided building tours, self-guided grounds tours, curriculum-based interactive programs for students, outreach programs for schools, hands-on activities, overnight programs, and picnic tables.
The California State Indian Museum displays exhibits and artifacts illustrating the cultures of the state's first inhabitants. California's prehistoric population, one of the largest and most diverse in the Western hemisphere, was made up of over 150 distinct tribal groups who spoke at least 64 different languages. California Indian population estimates, before the arrival of the first Europeans, were at least 500,000 people. California Indian cultural artifacts in the museum include basketry, beadwork, clothing, and exhibits about the ongoing traditions of various California Indian tribes. Descendents of the first Californians, tens of thousands of them, still live in California and still cherish and carry on their unique cultural heritage. Indigenous people have donated many photographs of family, friends, and memorable times for use in the museum. A section of the museum features a hands-on area, where visitors can try their hand at using Indian tools, such as the pump drill, used for making holes in shell beads and other materials and the mortar and pestle and soap root brush, made from the soap root plant, all used for grinding acorns.
The museum offers exhibits and tours.
Liendo Plantation was founded in 1853 as one of the earliest cotton plantations in Texas. Union officer George A. Custer (1839-1876) was stationed at the plantation toward the end of the Civil War; and the site was home to sculptor Elisabet Ney (1833-1907) and her husband between 1873 and 1911. The site also houses a Detering Red Brahman cow breeding program, and hosts an annual Civil War weekend.
The plantation offers guided tours and period rooms. Reservations are required for group tours. Boxed lunches are available. Please contact the plantation for more information.
The Floyd County Museum presents historical and modern agricultural and industrial prairie life in Floyd County, Iowa. Highlights include tractors; 19th-century tools; and artifacts related to women's suffrage leader Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), founder of the League of Women Voters. Period rooms include a circa 1900 drug store setting and a country schoolroom. The collection focuses on the years 1850 through 1950. The museum is located within a historical laboratory building. Charles City, where the museum is located, is best know as the site of the first gasoline-powered tractors.
The museum offers exhibits and period rooms.
The Goodhue County Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Goodhue County, Minnesota. To this end, the society operates the History Center. Collections include more than 150,000 artifacts, ranging back to prehistoric times. Permanent displays address Native American life, military history, geology, natural history, sports, leisure, costume, agriculture, archaeology, business, and immigration.
The society offers exhibits, customizable one-hour guided tours of the History Center, student educational programs, traveling trunks, traveling exhibits, films for rental, artifacts available for classroom use, research library access, and research assistance. Two weeks advance notice is required for all guided tours. Traveling trunk topics include women in history, rural schools, archaeology, and immigration. A fee is charged for library use and for research assistance. The website offers historic photographs.
Oatlands Plantation was built in 1798 by George Carter, of the prominent Carter family of Virginia, as a grain plantation. The federal style plantation house was completed in 1804. The plantation was commercially successful until the advent of the Civil War. During the first half of the 20th century the plantation served as the country home of Mr. and Mrs. William Corcoran Eustis, a Washington political family.
The site offers several educational tours that meet Virginia SOLs for grades 2, 4, 5, and 6. The site also maintains a research library for teacher and student use.
The Nishna Heritage Museum primarily presents the history of the Oakland, Iowa area. Additional displays are global in scope. Exhibits include quilts and quilting, historical tools, music playing devices, and dairy equipment. Highlights include an early 20th-century tire changer, Edison phonographs, a butter press, and a switch board.
The museum offers period rooms and exhibits.