We enjoyed our visit to this museum. It consists of over 30 buildings from the Pioneer period in this area as well as museum buildings containing various artefacts from Appelachia. These have been collected over a period of 50 years by John Rice Irwin and reassembled here. The buildings have been spread over an area of grass and up to the adjacent woodland. They are connected, basically, in a large circle with a path joining them together. They are individually numbered and a map given with a short description of each building. You can go inside most of the buildings and they are furnished appropriately. There are also buildings such as a church, saw mill, blacksmith’s shop and smoke house. There are chickens in the chicken house and a often a couple sitting outside one of the cabins singing songs of the period.
There is also a fairly comprehensive gift shop and restaurant which uses food grown in the garden. We liked the fact that as well as being a great collection of buildings you were left with a sense of how these pioneers lived and worked. The website is www.museumofappalachia.org.
