March 2011

Kentucky pioneers William and Esther Whitley settled on this site in 1794 and built Kentucky's first brick home as a bulwark against Indian raids. Known as the "Guardian of Wilderness Road," the house hosted famous explorers Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark.

Twenty-five minute guided tours of the family home lead through the bedrooms, dining room, and the secret staircase that served as a hiding spot. Artifacts on display include William's long rifle and Esther's textiles.

This 892-acre park, crossed by 8.5 miles of walking paths, contains a memorial to the October 3, 1786, massacre of 24 west-going pioneers by Shawnee Indians.Two historic trails, the Wilderness Road and Boone's Trace, began here and were traveled by more than 200,000 settlers between 1775 and 1818.

In nearby London, the Mountain Life Museum features a recreated 19th-century village with seven buildings, such as the loom house and barn, which feature 18th-century pioneer tools, rifles, and farm equipment.McHargue's Mill, a half-mile south, first began operating in 1817. Visitors can watch cornmeal being ground and see more than 50 millstones.

This three-floor museum dedicated to the history of the early coal mining industry is located on a former coal miners' campsite in Benham.

One mile east in Lynch is an exhibit space designed to resemble an underground coal mine with eight exhibit areas featuring early 20th-century artifacts, including flame safety lamps. Thousands of artifacts include fossils, mining tools, machinery, and the personal belongings of county star Loretta Lynn, who hailed from Kentucky's coal country.

On this site in early 1862, volunteer Union soldiers led by future president Col. James Garfield forced Brig. Gen. Humphrey Marshall's 2,500 Confederates from the forks of Middle Creek and back to Virginia. The 450-acre park hosts battle reenactments during September. Two half-mile trail loops of the original armies' positions provide views of Kentucky valleys.

This three-floor museum in the 1894 Guerrant Clinic building focuses on the history of the Bluegrass region, so named after the blue-blossomed grass species that grows here in profusion.

It features displays on the Eskippakithiki Indians, the founding of the Western frontier and Wilderness Road, the Civil War, and the tobacco industry. The Bell South Central gallery contains a 1910 "Bull's Eye" switchboard and phone booth, while the military gallery has World War II uniforms from the Army and Navy.

On a hot day in June 1875, 28-year-old Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, were toiling in adjacent workshops at 109 Court Street in Boston. Under sloped attic walls of rough-sawn wood, the two men hunched over benches covered with curled wires and jar-shaped batteries filled with acid. A few years before, an inventor named Joseph Stearns had made a fortune selling Western Union a device capable of sending two telegraphs simultaneously over one wire. Bell hoped to leapfrog that invention with a telegraph using different tones to transmit many messages at the same time.

After Watson plucked a reed to test the transmitter, Bell was surprised to hear a faint sound reproduced on the receiving device in his room. A former concert pianist, he instantly recognized the miracle that had occurred: the sound waves of a complex musical note had induced a current in the wire and reconstituted in the next room.

By August 1859, “Colonel” E. L. Drake and his small crew were disheartened. Few if any of the locals believed that oil—liquid called rock oil—could come out of the ground. In fact, they thought Drake was crazy. A small group of Connecticut investors had set Drake up in the small lumber town of Titusville in northwestern Pennsylvania to try this “lunatic” scheme. The work was slow, difficult, and continually dogged by disappointment and the specter of failure. After a year, the venture had run out of money, and New Haven banker James Townsend had been paying expenses out of his pocket.

The American Revolution Center (formerly the Valley Forge Historical Society) is dedicated to creating the first national museum to commemorate the entire story of the American Revolution and its enduring legacy.

Over the course of a century, the group has assembled a rich collection of several thousand objects, works of art, manuscripts, and printed works from the period of the American Revolution.The collection began with the 1909 purchase of General George Washington’s marquee (sleeping and office tent) from Martha Washington’s great-great-granddaughter, Mary Custis Lee.

The Center’s collection documents the roots, course and consequences of the American War of Independence and the creation of the American Republic. The primary focus is on the years 1750-1800. The collection includes items that reflect the social, economic, religious, political and military aspects of the Revolutionary era as well as materials documenting the commemoration and memory of the American Revolution.

In mid-June 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac pressed forward into Virginia toward Richmond, beginning the bloody but ultimately decisive Petersburg Campaign, which would last 292 days and embrace six major battles, 11 engagements, 44 skirmishes, six assaults, and three raids. Of all these encounters, none is more grimly memorable than the officially titled “Explosion of the Petersburg Mine and Assault on the Crater” of July 30, 1864.

Hollywood depicted the Battle of the Crater in Anthony Minghella’s 2003 film, Cold Mountain; no less than nine books about the battle have been published since 1938, so one might seriously have wondered what new light Richard Slotkin’s No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, 1864 could shed on this one-day operation.