Built in 1872, the Prison held some of the most notorious outlaws in the region, including Butch Cassidy. Visitors to the 190- cre facility can also enjoy the newly restored Warden's House and Horse Barn Exhibit Hall featuring rotating displays and a family-friendly scavenger hunt.
The site offers exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events (including living history events).
The Daniel Boone Homestead is a state historic site which preserves a number of historic structures. Daniel Boone's parents first settled the site in 1730 and the region was populated by many diverse people—English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, Germans, Swedes, Huguenots, and Lenape Indians. Daniel was born here in 1734 and spent his first 16 years here before his family migrated to North Carolina. Today the site tells the story of Daniel's youth and the saga of the region's 18th-century settlers by contrasting their lives and cultures. This region left a lasting impact on Daniel Boone's life, and on the history of Pennsylvania.
The site offers a short film, exhibits, tours, educational programs, and occasional recreational and educational programs (including living history events).
Visitors to Arthurdale, WV can revisit the 1930s. Established in 1933, by the United States government, Arthurdale is the nation's first New Deal Homestead Community. Created through President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation, the community provided a new chance at life for residents of West Virginia who were suffering from the Great Depression. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt served as the empathetic force behind the community, which became known as "Eleanor’s Little Village" because of her interest. Today, Arthurdale is a National Historic District that features 160 of the 165 original homesteads. The New Deal Homestead Museum is a multi-building museum comprised of a forge filled with original tools, a service station reminiscent of a bygone era, the historic Center Hall, the original federal government administration building, and a fully restored Arthurdale homestead.
The museum offers exhibits, tours, and occasional recreational and educational events.
"An NCHE team of Elliott West, Flannery Burke, and Linda Clark will explore the topic of The Growth of a Nation: Westward Movement at this Teaching American History colloquium."
"An NCHE team of Greg Smoak, David Byrd, and JoAnn Fox will explore the topic of Frontiers: Homesteaders, Native Americans, Immigrants, and Settling the West at this Frontiers of History colloquium."
"To many, the Great Plains are part of the Great Flyover, whose landscape and history alike are flat and featureless. But in this region in the middle of the nation, cultures have mingled and clashed for thousands of years. This seminar will focus on the 19th century, though also examining the first peoples and the continuing cultural exchanges of the 20th century. It will begin with the physical setting, plants, and animals, and consider early humans in both Native American traditions and anthropological/archeological studies. Europeans arriving in the 16th century accelerated the long history of change and evolution, initiating more than three centuries of converging peoples and cultures, new centers of power, flourishing trade, calamitous epidemics, and cultural and material intrusions from across the planet. Participants will visit Bent’s Fort to see a cultural crossroads illustrated through one family. The seminar will also examine cattle ranching, homesteading, scientific explorations, and the depiction of the plains in art."
These two collections illuminate life on the Great Plains from 1862 to 1912. The nearly 3,500 glass plate negatives depict everyday life in central Nebraska, with images of businesses, farms, people, churches, and fairs in four counties. Approximately 318 letters describe the sojourn of the Uriah Oblinger family through Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Kansas, and Missouri as they traveled to establish a homestead. Letters discuss such topics as land, work, neighbors, crops, religious meetings, grasshoppers, financial troubles, and Nebraska's Easter Blizzard of 1873.
A 1,000-word essay describes the letter collection and the lives of the principal correspondents. Biographical notes are available for more than 120 of the people who corresponded with the Oblingers or who were mentioned in the letters.