Knife River Heritage & Cultural Center (KRHCC) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to engage the public in preserving, presenting, and valuing the history of the Knife River area. The organization was created in 2018 to save the historic railroad train depot from falling down. In just four years, KRHCC volunteers successfully rehabilitated the depot and have accomplished much more, including implementing an educational signage program.
After two years of planning, research, and implementation, the Erie Canal Equipment Overlooks are complete with new interpretive exhibits. The interpretive panels are installed in Lockport, New York, along the Pendleton portion of the Erie Canalway Trail. This project serves to educate the community about the historic canal equipment on display and bring the history of the Erie Canal’s 1900s engineering to life.
Jason Gardiner is a member of Boy Scout Troop 57 from East Hampton, Connecticut. He recently earned his Eagle Scout status after the completion of a trail signage project along the East Hampton portion of the Air Line Trail. Jason worked for many months on the creation of four historical signs and his hard work will benefit the community for years to come.
Dating back to 1749, Fort Harrison, also known as The Daniel Harrison House, stands tall in the Shenandoah Valley. Passed down for centuries, this solidly-built limestone house is now owned by a non-profit organization called Fort Harrison, Inc. The organization restored and continuously maintains the old frontier house and recently installed historical signs to serve as constant teaching tools across the property.
Every city has a story, but not every story contains the rich history and pivotal events like that of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Known commonly as the “Secret City,” Oak Ridge was the location of the World War II, top-secret Manhattan Project. The project site is now a National Historical Park, but only some parts remain accessible to the public. With a story like this one, the city set to work to share its origins and the global impact it had on the world, then and now.
Home to the third-largest Shaker community in the United States between 1805 and 1910, Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill is Kentucky’s largest National Historic Landmark. Shaker Village attracts thousands of visitors every year to experience the 3,000-acre property, home to 34 original Shaker structures.
The Lees Ferry District of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in northern Arizona is home to miles of trails with many historic sites along the way offering incredible stories of the desert’s history. The trails and sites were in need of fresh interpretive signage to help give visitors a memorable, self-guided educational experience. A signage overhaul is no small undertaking, especially when considering a 120-acre area of land visited by over a million people every year.
In 2019, the Township of Plainsboro, New Jersey, celebrated 100 years of pride and progress. This momentous milestone involved a year-long series of events to engage the community through monthly activities, photo contests, historical timelines, testimonials, and more.
One of these events was the Centennial Founder’s Day Celebration, held in May 2019. The event included the grand re-opening of the historic Wicoff House Museum, an 1870s farmhouse that was the home of one of the township’s founders. To celebrate this grand re-opening, Plainsboro Township knew they needed something memorable to honor the events and people which make up its history.
The diverse history of San Francisco did not start in with the California Gold Rush in the 1840s. Nor did it begin in 1776 when the Spanish established a Mission and a Presidio. Instead, San Francisco’s history dates back thousands of years further in time. During those millennia California was the land of Native Americans, and the Ohlone Tribe called San Francisco, and indeed much of the Bay Area home, as do their descents today. Yet, standing at the Moscone Center in the heart of this urban setting, it may seem an impossible task to envision what everyday life was like on this spot 500 or 1000 years ago.
Over the past two and a half years, the Chesapeake Chapter of the US Lighthouse Society has created and installed fifteen indoor lighthouse historical exhibits. They established the Offshore Lighthouse Historical Placard program in 2016. There are several purposes to the program; one of them being to preserve the history of Lighthouses, Lighthouse Keepers, Lightships, and Lightship crew in the Chesapeake Bay core area.