Stanton Virginia USA: The homestead museum
In the western part of Virginia, which was one of the first regions of the USA to be settled by European pioneers, there is a wonderful and unique museum dedicated to preserving the history and teaching the traditions of frontier America. This “Frontier Museum” lies on some 100 or more acres of land, just off the main Interstate Highway 85, and has a library of old and out of print books on frontier life, culture, tools, and traditions, plus real working farms or homesteads, where you and your family can watch people in period costume doing things the way they were done by pioneers. In one homestead you can watch bread being cooked in a Dutch oven while women spin yarn from sheep’s wool. And you can even sit and have a taste of the bread once it’s done. On another tract, you can learn how to make fences using old hand tools like the drawing knife and broad axe, and on another one you can pet the horses that used to be used - and at this particular site still are used - to do chores like plowing and hauling firewood. The working museums are staffed by volunteers, many of them students of anthropology or agriculture from nearby universities, and you can spend the entire day at the museum, walking from the Appalachian style cabin to the Pennsylvania style farmhouse to the English style homestead, learning as you listen to the volunteers describe what it was like in the old days. The site is a must-see destination for people of all ages, and is a convenient way to break up a long trip along the eastern seaboard of the USA.