Crystal River Archaeological State Park [FL]

Description

A National Historic Landmark, this 61-acre, pre-Columbian, Native American site has burial mounds, temple/platform mounds, a plaza area, and a substantial midden. The six-mound complex is one of the longest continuously occupied sites in Florida. For 1,600 years the site served as an imposing ceremonial center for Native Americans. People traveled to the complex from great distances to bury their dead and conduct trade. It is estimated that as many as 7,500 Native Americans may have visited the complex every year.

The park offers exhibits, tours, boat tours, educational programs, and occasional documentary screenings.

Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum [TX]

Description

The Museum is the largest history museum in Texas with more than 285,000 square feet of space. On the campus of what is now West Texas A&M University, the Museum has more than three million artifacts, ranging from the Comanche Chief Quanah Parker's eagle feather headdress to collections of historic New Mexico and Texas art.

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

Bourne Historical Society and Center, Aptucxet Trading Post, and Briggs-McDermott House [MA]

Description

The Society is housed in the Jonathan Bourne Historical Center, built in 1897 by Emily Howland Bourne as a town library and as a memorial to her father, Jonathan Bourne, for whom the town was named. The Society also manages the Aptucxet Trading Post and the Briggs-McDermott House. The Trading Post recreates the first trade house built in 1627, by Plymouth Colony, located on the south bank of the Manomet (Monument) River, which is now part of the Cape Cod Canal. The Pilgrims traded with the Indians and the Dutch from New Amsterdam (New York City), thus having a source of income by which their debt to the London backers of their expedition to the New World could be repaid. The Trading Post site also houses Gray Gables Railroad Station, built for the personal use of President Grover Cleveland during the years of his presidency (1893–1896). The Greek Revival-style Briggs-McDermott House has been restored and furnished to reflect the period from 1840 to 1910, an important time for the Briggs family and Bourne.

The society offers lectures and occasional recreational and educational events; the center offers tours, exhibits, and research library access; the Trading Post offers tours; the Briggs-McDermott House offers exhibits and tours.

First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park [MT]

Description

A visitor center and interpretive trails tell the story of this prehistoric bison kill site, one of the largest in the United States. For over 600 years, Indians stampeded buffalo over the mile-long cliff. Now, the top of the jump gives visitors panoramic views of the Rocky Mountain Front, the Missouri River valley, and the buttes and grasslands that characterized this High Plains setting.

The site offers exhibits, tours, and recreational and educational events.

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

Description

The Site preserves the central section of the largest prehistoric Native American city north of Mexico. Occupied from 700 to 1400, the city grew to cover 4,000 acres, with a population of between ten and twenty thousand at its peak around 1100. The site is dominated by the 100-foot-tall Monks Mound, the largest prehistoric earthen mound in the Americas. In 1966 Cahokia Mounds was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1983 was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Cahokia Mounds preserves 68 of the original 120 earthen mounds built by prehistoric Native Americans. Visitors may climb a stairway to the top of Monks Mound, where interpretive signs provide an explanation of the impressive view. Other physical features include a reconstructed stockade wall and "Woodhenge," a circle of posts around a large central post from which the sunrise can be aligned to determine the season and time of year. The Interpretive Center houses museum exhibit galleries, an orientation show theater, a public programming auditorium, staff offices, and a courtyard for educational programs. Exhibit galleries and an award-winning orientation show, "City of the Sun," describe the Native Americans who lived there as well as the site's historic and archaeological significance.

The site offers exhibits, tours, a short film, lectures, and educational and recreational events and programs.

Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Jamestown Settlement, and Yorktown Victory Center [VA]

Description

The Foundation operates the Jamestown Settlement and the Yorktown Victory Center, two living-history museums that explore America’s beginnings. Through film, artifact-filled galleries, and outdoor living history, these museums engage visitors in nearly two centuries of the nation's history—from the founding of America's first permanent English settlement in 1607 to the decisive Revolutionary War victory in 1781 and implementation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Today at Jamestown Settlement, the story of the people who founded Jamestown and of the Virginia Indians they encountered is told through film, gallery exhibits, and living history. New gallery exhibits and a new introductory film trace Jamestown's beginnings in England and the first century of the Virginia colony and describe the cultures of the Powhatan Indians, Europeans, and Africans who converged in 1600s Virginia. Outdoors, visitors can board replicas of the three ships that sailed from England to Virginia in 1607, explore life-size recreations of the colonists' fort and a Powhatan village, and tour a riverfront discovery area to learn about European, Powhatan, and African economic activities associated with water. In the outdoor areas, costumed historical interpreters describe and demonstrate daily life in the early 17th century. Today at the Yorktown Victory Center, America's evolution from colonial status to nationhood is chronicled through a unique blend of timeline, film, thematic exhibits and outdoor living history. An outdoor exhibit walkway details events that led American colonies to declare independence from Britain.

A second website for the organization can be found here.

The sites offer short films, exhibits, tours, demonstrations, lectures, educational programs, and recreational and educational programs.

Fort Bedford Museum [PA]

Description

Old Fort Bedford was a British stockade built in 1758 as part of the French and Indian War campaign against the French at Fort Duquesne. After several failed attempts in the early 1750s, the British launched a major offensive against Fort Duquesne in 1758. Facing the formidable task of crossing the Allegheny Mountains and the treat of attack, numerous stockades were built along the way west. Fort Bedford was constructed as a key fortification along the military path Forbes Road and served as the staging area for the successful campaign. After the war Fort Bedford stood until the 1770s, used as a British outpost on the frontier and as a refuge from Indian attack as westward migration increased in the 18th century. Today, a reconstructed blockhouse structure houses a large-scale model of the original fort. The Museum displays Native American artifacts collected from the region. Thousands of household items dating back 100 to more than 200 years ago from flintlock rifles to early clothing to antique hand tools help to recreate the atmosphere of pioneer days on the frontier of western Pennsylvania.

The museum offers exhibits.