**** Official History Museum Review Thread ***

2,946 Views | 36 Replies | Last: 5 mo ago by CanyonAg77
CanyonAg77
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AG
Stealing BQ_90's idea.

https://texags.com/forums/49/topics/3433665/23

Let's have your photos, experiences and reviews of museums, especially history museums. Big or small, great or lousy, let's have your impression. Obviously, we want to hear about the big ones: Smithsonian, National WWI and WWII museums, etc.

But how about the small ones? Maybe museums that you wouldn't make a trip to see, but maybe you'd stop on the way. I love these little low-budget museums, often done by the locals.

I think that Historic sites, with or without attached museums also qualify.


Put what info you'd like, but here are my suggestions:

  • Museums you've been to only
  • Web site or Facebook Page links
  • General rating and impressions
  • Your photos or web photos if you don't have any
  • Special exhibits or must see items
  • Any nearby food, fun, or site to visit
CanyonAg77
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After starting the thread, it may be a while before I make any real contribution myself.

But quickly, I have to throw out my usual endorsement of our local Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. Often called one of the finest regional museums in the United States, I have to agree. Covers pre-history through Indians, ranchers, farmers, up to modern times. I've been visiting since I was in grade school, and it never gets old.

As I said, pioneer history, Indian artifacts, oil boom exhibits, dinosaurs, antique cars, firearms collection, and more.

Special exhibits: Recreated 1900s Pioneer town with artifacts from all sorts of businesses, homes, and schools. The oldest production Ford Automobile known (#28). Wooden oil derrick. Billy Dixon's famous rifle. Hidden out back is a brick wall from Fort Bascom, NM. Charles Goodnight and Quanah Parker artifacts.

https://www.panhandleplains.org/

https://www.facebook.com/panhandleplainshistoricalmuseum

And I'm going to suspend my own "photos" rule. The reason being is that the museum has an excellent Virtual Tour available at the link below. Really well done.

https://www.virtually-anywhere.net/tours/wtamu/pphm/vtour/index.html
LMCane
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Considering I have been writing a book on the Civil War for the last three years of research, I am not going to post every museum I have been to but the ones off the beaten path:

Shenandoah Valley Museum, Winchester Virginia
https://www.themsv.org/
LMCane
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Soldier Experience Musuem,
Army War College at Carlisle Barracks Pennsylvania

https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/exhibits/SoldierExperience.cfm
LMCane
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National Civil War Museum Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

https://www.nationalcivilwarmuseum.org/
Jabin
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Good idea!

I visited a couple of small, unique museums back in the summer of 2012. One was the Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron, NE.

Chadron, Nebraska | American History | Museum of the Fur Trade

Mostly what I remember of it was that the old Bordeaux trading post was tiny given that it was apparently a major trading post. Also, the museum has hundreds of old trade guns traded to the Indians as part of the fur trade. I believe that they also somehow obtained firearms owned by Kit Carson and the Indian leader Tecumseh.

The other museum was the Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale, WY.

Museum of the Mountain Man

I don't remember too much about it because the day I visited Pinedale also had a mountain man parade that day which was a big deal. Hundreds of people dressed up like mountain men, mountain women, and Native Americans.
LMCane
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29th Infantry Division Museum
Verona, Virginia



parts of the original Stonewall Jackson Brigade later became the 29th Blue/Gray Division
Who?mikejones!
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That is a surprisingly great museum
CanyonAg77
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LMCane said:

National Civil War Museum Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

https://www.nationalcivilwarmuseum.org/

As much as I appreciate your participation, it's not very helpful. We could look that up online and know more than you told us.

I was really hoping this would be a thread for reviews, not a simple listing of "museums I've been to". My post on PPHM is closer to the lines I was hoping people would contribute.

I did a whole post on one historic site. I had hopes people would do the same type of post, but a lot shorter. Something more than name, rank, and serial number, but not as much as I did on Adobe Walls. Though if a site is worth that many words, go for it!

Adobe Walls Site Visit
Who?mikejones!
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The Texas military forces museum at camp mabry is surprisingly good. Many vehicles of various years a countries and some that still operate.
BQ_90
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not great pics, but these are in the lobby of the WWII museum

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/

Haven't been in over a decade, on my list to go back. It was incredible must see if your into WWII
BQ_90
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AG




https://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/

In Fredericksburg; awesome place in middle of Texas. Similar in design to WWII museum in New Orleans.
BQ_90
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SAC museum in Ashland NE, northeast of Lincoln.

Been 20 years since i've been it was rush tour but it was worth it.

https://www.sacmuseum.org/

if you are big fan of planes, esp bombers, this is the place to go.
HarleySpoon
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Been to a lot of neat museums and you guys will eventually mention all of them. British Museum, Smithsonian Museum and untold battlefield museums in Europe and USA.....fantastic aviation museums and western museums.

However, this is one that might be missed if you don't know any history friends that have been there. It is the Shelburne Museum just outside of Burlington, Vermont. Just a tremendous two days with the kids going thru the history of what day-to-day life was in nineteenth century, northeastern America. Just incredible, original, wonderfully preserved structures filled with collections of artifacts. Best description is a "collection of collections." It's like 35-40 comprehensive museums in one. This wealthy lady began collecting the stuff in the early 20th century and putting it on her incredible farm. Fully preserved 220 foot steamboat...merchant shops of every sort. The wagon barn must have 200 wonderfully original and preserved horse-drawn vehicles of types you could never imagine had existed. A circus outfit from the turn of the century. I've just never seen anything else like it anywhere in the USA or Europe. Bits here and there...but never a fraction of what was all brought together in one place.

https://shelburnemuseum.org/about/

Shelburne Museum is an unparalleled and unique experience of American history, art, and design. Designed to allow visitors the pleasure of discovery and exploration, the Museum includes thirty-nine distinct structures on forty-five acres, each filled with beautiful, fascinating, and whimsical objects.

She grew up in New York, where her parents, Henry and Louisine Havemeyer, were important collectors of European and Asian art. By the age of nineteen, she resolved to follow in their footsteps but instead envisioned a collection that would celebrate the arts of America. Mrs. Webb saw beauty in the everyday objects that had been part of American life for generationsfurniture, pottery, quilts, weathervanes, and moreand filled her homes in New York and Shelburne, Vermont, with antiques.

When Mrs. Webb founded Shelburne Museum in 1947, it was at first a place to preserve her family's collection of horse-drawn carriages. Before long, however, she realized that she had a rare opportunity to create what she described as a "collection of collections" and "an educational project, varied and alive."

From the countryside throughout New England and New York, Mrs. Webb found historic buildings that would provide appropriate settings for her collections, and she relocated them to the Museum grounds: houses, barns, a meeting house, a one-room schoolhouse, a lighthouse, a jail, a general store, a covered bridge, and the 220-foot steamboat Ticonderoga. She worked with a landscape design team to situate them within a welcoming environment that today includes a lush gardens and enticing views.
Mrs. Webb created something completely unprecedented for her time: world-class collections in a village-like setting of historic New England buildings and landscapes; a welcoming and informal place for visitors to engage with history through objects that tell stories.


one safe place
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I normally don't get too enthused at museums, and I don't know why. After 10 or 15 minutes I have generally had enough.

Of those I have seen and would visit again are the In Flanders Field Museum in Ypres, Belgium. Can also attend the Call to the Last Post ceremony every evening at 8pm in Ypres.

Here in the states, I liked the Vicksburg Civil War Museum. It is not huge but has a lot of artifacts put together by a nice guy named Charles Pendleton. He is a black guy and you sense a lean toward black history in that war within his museum. Which is ok, I guess, just I am not too tuned into the race part of things. My wife mentioned to him about her GGG (or thereabouts) grandfather and his involvement in the siege of Vicksburg and we had a very long conversation with him. Lots of weapons, cannon balls, everyday things the soldiers carried and used during the Civil War.
Jabin
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Another museum I thought of is an entire town - Colonial Williamsburg.

It is truly amazing, and part of what is amazing is that its existence is not founded on government funding, but rather private money from the Rockefellers.

The gun shop manufactures their rifles completely from scratch. The waiting list to get one is years and they sell for $20,000. That is a bargain compared to furniture from the furniture shop which can sell for prices in the hundreds of thousands. What intrigued me about the furniture shop is that they had power tools. The tools were powered by a man pushing large pedals with his feet, and the pedals in turn drove a rope that ran around the entire shop powering various machines.

CW's commitment to authenticity is legendary. They had taken their best educted guess as to the manufacture and design of wallpaper during colonial times and had papered the hundreds of houses accordingly. However, in archaeological research at a nearby plantation house, they learned that their educated guesses were wrong, so they re-papered everything in CW.

The uniforms for the Fife & Drum corps are authentic, so much so that the pewter buttons alone on the uniforms cost thousands for each uniform.

The hostesses (and most likely now hosts) in the buildings have to take a year of training, with rigorous exams, before they are allowed to begin work.

For any that have not visited CW, it is an absolute "must see."
Rabid Cougar
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National Museum of the Marine Corps. Triangle, Virginia. It is magnificent!
Marine Corps Museum

National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida - If you are a plane nerd... almost Heaven.
Naval Aviation

UDvar-Hazy Center- National Air and Space Museum , Chantilly , Virginia ......Heaven
Udvar-Hazy Center

National Museum of the U.S.Air Force, Dayton Ohio.... Right next door to Heaven
Museum of the Air Force

If you can see the pattern. Plane nerd! Yes, I have been to every one of them... multiple times...

Frontier Army Museum at Fort Leavenworth, Leavenworth, Kansas.
Frontier Army Museum.

Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland used to house versions of all the Army's old tanks and captured tanks. They are now scattered all of the country. Same for the Patton Museum at Fort Knox. I haven't been to the new locations/facilities yet.

All of the Visitor Centers at the NPS National Battlefield parks. Most have exceptional book selections....



Rabid Cougar
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Jabin said:

Another museum I thought of is an entire town - Colonial Williamsburg.

The hostesses (and most likely now hosts) in the buildings have to take a year of training, with rigorous exams, before they are allowed to begin work.

For any that have not visited CW, it is an absolute "must see."
Agreed. Their "host" are on par with the Professional Battlefield Guides at Gettysburg. They know their sh8t!
C1NRB
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W.K. Gordon Museum and Research Center for Industrial History of Texas

https://www.tarleton.edu/gordoncenter/

Located in Thurber, TX off of I-20. Turn of the century from late 1800's to 1900's, from Boom Town to Ghost Town it's a story of a "company-owned town."
It's funny and entertaining- you don't realize how they lived where everything was owned by the "corporate".
tallgrant
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Just finished checking the last major US Civil War battlefields off my bucket list. Here in no particular order are my top five National Military parks for the Civil War:

1. Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania NMP: four battlefields in one day. The preservation is awesome, Fredericksburg is a wonderful walk, and you can really follow Stonewall's Flank March and see how the opening marches from The Wilderness to Spotsylvania set up the Overland Campaign.
2. Antietam NB: All sections well preserved, incredible views and trails. The ranger station was recently redone, but it seemed a bit small
3. Gettysburg NMP: This one has so much to see and has had a ton of money poured into it due to the traffic it receives, and the visitor center is top notch. It's hard to truly appreciate Pickett's Charge without walking it.
4. Chickamauga and Chattanooga NMP: Chicmauaga has the superior visitor's center and preserved vattlefield. The views on Lookout Mountain are great but Chattanooga has otherwise eaten most of the battlefield.
5. Shiloh NMP: Really big expansive battlefield. I haven't seen the new visitor center, but they do tons of excellent demonstrations and ranger tours every week (their facebook pops them up every week)
chick79
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I am really looking forward to the opening in March 2025 of the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington TX. It looks like it will be amazing.
Ghost of Andrew Eaton
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A good buddy of mine was responsible for much of the designs in that museum. He got to go to Peleliu and eat fresh fish on a boat rights after it was caught. He said that you could literally just pickup WW2 artifacts, mostly casings, all over the island.
terata
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The Smithsonian
Andersonville

and a question for y'all - have any of you ever visoted Fort Pillow? There is a small but interesting on thr grounds
LMCane
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I stayed at the Inn of the Patriots Museum / Bed and Breakfast in North Carolina a few years ago.

Grover, North Carolina

Guests staying at The Inn of the Patriots enjoy a private tour:

featured in 160+ newspapers and magazines on Earth in 14 years. As seen in the Official Museum Directory in partnership with the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), as a Blue Star Museum with the National Endowment for the Arts, a licensed partner with Google Cultural Institute (enter for digital collections), and officially listed with the North Carolina Museum Council (NCMC) we are featuring each of the Presidents.

Additionally, artifacts, antiques, and individual items have been sent from the United States National Archives, The Bush's Foundations, President Carter, President Reagan, President Ford, President Obama, President Trump, President Eisenhower, and The Clinton Foundation.

The Presidential Culinary Museum is a small portion of the United States Food History Museum (USFHM) & World Food History Museum (WFHM) heralding Presidential Food Service, the slow food movement, major food manufacturers and their brands, as well as the famous icons developed in America sold worldwide like the Baby Ruth candy bar, Heinz catsup, Coca-Cola, Reeses and so many more.



The museum utilizes our current success of Inside the Presidents' Cabinet shows. As a private, for-profit museum, we excel.
BigJim49 AustinNowDallas
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Flight Museum in Galvesto was grest! But it has been moved I dont know where!
CanyonAg77
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Visited a 'new to me' museum this weekend. Stayed in LaVeta, CO, in the beautiful Spanish Peaks area. Fascinating place from a geological standpoint. Volcanic rock and dikes all over.

Francisco Fort was established in 1862, and town of La Veta grew up around it. More of a stockade/inn than a fort, but one of the oldest surviving adobe structures in Colorado.

The local museum is like a lot of small town museums, in that it is full of donated items that families sent to the museum rather than the dump grounds when grandma passed. But it is still worth a stop if you are in the area and need an indoor break.

Personal and business antiques, a mining room, some farm equipment, arrowheads and other Indian artifacts , a few firearms, an early log schoolhouse, blacksmith shop, and the old adobe structure itself is interesting.

One old building is set up like a saloon, and contains the bar owned by "The Coward Bob Ford" in Walsenburg, CO



Top, Bob Ford bar, bottom mine cart, stationary thrasher, row binder

https://www.facebook.com/share/F5doF7EXuftku2sV/?mibextid=LQQJ4d
CanyonAg77
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Related, an old store right next to the Fort, was owned by the family of a WWII WASP. This sculpture is on the path into the museum, beside the store





Cinco Ranch Aggie
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BQ_90 said:





https://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/

In Fredericksburg; awesome place in middle of Texas. Similar in design to WWII museum in New Orleans.
I always forget that it is called the Pacific War Museum, I always seem to refer to it as the Nimitz Museum. They also have on display one of the Jap mini-subs involved in the Pearl Harbor attack. This is the one that beached. And don't let the name fool you - it is huge.

There is also a location nearby where they do re-enactments of island combat. That was great to watch.
Cinco Ranch Aggie
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Rabid Cougar said:

National Museum of the Marine Corps. Triangle, Virginia. It is magnificent!
Marine Corps Museum

National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida - If you are a plane nerd... almost Heaven.
Naval Aviation

UDvar-Hazy Center- National Air and Space Museum , Chantilly , Virginia ......Heaven
Udvar-Hazy Center

National Museum of the U.S.Air Force, Dayton Ohio.... Right next door to Heaven
Museum of the Air Force

If you can see the pattern. Plane nerd! Yes, I have been to every one of them... multiple times...

Frontier Army Museum at Fort Leavenworth, Leavenworth, Kansas.
Frontier Army Museum.

Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland used to house versions of all the Army's old tanks and captured tanks. They are now scattered all of the country. Same for the Patton Museum at Fort Knox. I haven't been to the new locations/facilities yet.

All of the Visitor Centers at the NPS National Battlefield parks. Most have exceptional book selections....




Fellow plane nerd here. Been to Pensacola several times. I went to the museum in DC in 1995, where I saw the Enola Gay amid all the protestors' incorrect opinions, but I don't believe the facility near Dulles existed at that time. Have never made it to Ohio, but will rectify that eventually.

https://www.worldwariiaviation.org/

We are taking a summer trip starting June 15 to Colorado, where we will be visiting this museum. There is a P-47 day scheduled that day, but we will be driving at the time.
Aggie1205
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- Vintage Flying Museum

I've enjoyed the Vintage Flying Museum in Fort Worth. They have not only a good number of aircraft, but an area with assorted gear and models as well. If you go on the weekends, many of the aircraft are being worked on in front of you. They have a gift shop where they have a variety of things including a number of aviation related books that were donated that they sell for $5.
Smeghead4761
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National Infantry Museum Fort Benning Moore (Columbus) GA

It's been almost 10 years since I visited, but this museum has is very well done and has all sorts of cool infantry related stuff. The current museum is greatly expanded from the small, cramped one that was housed in what I think might have been the former commanding general's residence back when I was in IOBC and IOAC in 1996 and 2000.

IMO, the coolest item this museum has is a replica of General Omar Bradley's uniform jacket. And it's cool because of the, for lack of a better term, origin story. Everything on the jacket is a replica - except the 5-star rank insignia. As the story goes (and it used to have a small display with the story last time I was there), when the museum first opened, it was actually called the Bradley Museum. General Bradley was visiting the museum, and they showed him the uniform jacket. But the jacket didn't have any rank insignia on it, because you can't just walk into post Clothing Sales and get 5-star insignia. They have to be made to order, and only 5-star flag officers can order them.

So General Bradley took the rank insignia off the uniform he was wearing and gave them to the museum.

Other nearby stuff: the Andersonville prison camp site is about 40-45 minutes away.

Auburn University is about 45 minutes away from Columbus/Fort Moore, so you could probably add this to an Aggie football trip.

Places to eat:
Gus's Chick 'n' Shrimp, Victory Drive: fried chicken, fried shrimp, hush puppies and that sort of thing. Fantastic. I'd call it a greasy spoon, but it's all take out. The kitchen staff is exactly the kind of folks where you know it's going to be good for this type of food.

Cannon Brewpub, downtown Columbus: good beer, brewed on site. My favorite dish was the Cajun shrimp pasta.
BQ78
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Don't forget the National Civil War Naval Museum there as well. Some amazing artifacts and ironclad skeletons there.
LMCane
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Jabin said:

Another museum I thought of is an entire town - Colonial Williamsburg.

It is truly amazing, and part of what is amazing is that its existence is not founded on government funding, but rather private money from the Rockefellers.

The gun shop manufactures their rifles completely from scratch. The waiting list to get one is years and they sell for $20,000. That is a bargain compared to furniture from the furniture shop which can sell for prices in the hundreds of thousands. What intrigued me about the furniture shop is that they had power tools. The tools were powered by a man pushing large pedals with his feet, and the pedals in turn drove a rope that ran around the entire shop powering various machines.

CW's commitment to authenticity is legendary. They had taken their best educted guess as to the manufacture and design of wallpaper during colonial times and had papered the hundreds of houses accordingly. However, in archaeological research at a nearby plantation house, they learned that their educated guesses were wrong, so they re-papered everything in CW.

The uniforms for the Fife & Drum corps are authentic, so much so that the pewter buttons alone on the uniforms cost thousands for each uniform.

The hostesses (and most likely now hosts) in the buildings have to take a year of training, with rigorous exams, before they are allowed to begin work.

For any that have not visited CW, it is an absolute "must see."

I have been visiting Williamsburg for decades. It was brutal during Covid but now is coming back

park at the visitor center and walk along a nice path for about a mile

BQ78
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Pamplin Park Museum near Petersburg. Built on the site of the Federal breakthrough on April 2. The main museum has an immersive overall story of what it was like to be a soldier in the war. You pick a soldier and follow them through the war as you look at the exhibit. There is an ante bellum home on the site that was McGowan's headquarters. There is another museum specific to what happened at Petersburg. There are historical interpreters as Civil War soldiers in a winter encampment site where they interpret the life and punishment of soldiers. There is a recreated trench line where they fire a 12 pound Napoleon and Enfields. Cavalry soldiers fire Spencer carbines. Then you can walk the breakthrough trench line with some of the best preserved entrenchments you'll ever see.

Across the road you can see the site where AP Hill was killed with his lucky hambone in his pocket.
Agsquatch
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oh man i am LOVING this thread

+1 for Panhandle Plains museum. I used to visit there as a kid and it was magical.

+1 for Udvar-Hazy, I'll post a few pictures from my phone. It was especially cool to see Space Shuttle Discovery, because as a kid my mom was friends with Rick Husband's brother, and we got to go see STS-97 launch. He was in the pilot role for this launch, and his last launch was Cmdr of STS-107 Columbia when it broke apart across N TX.

I will add two non-traditional "living museums" of sorts:

- DriveTanks near Uvalde has an incredible tank shed/gun wall with some really great pieces. Take whatever you want off the wall, don't be dumb with it and climb on and in stuff. It is fairly expensive to go to and you need an appointment. Their main business is tank rental and we did it for my best friends bachelor party.
https://www.drivetanks.com/



- Battlefield Vegas is another machine gun rental spot I went to for my BP. They have some very cool (and expensive) rentals there too like the only MP7 in Vegas - whatever you've heard about the MP7 is underselling just how good and controllable it is. But their outdoor waiting area has some amazing old armor you can check out in the parking lot, as well as a spot in the desert where you can play around with some big iron.

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