Travel Back in Time – A Continuing Travelogue the Best Historic Sites Part III The Midwest
June 10, 2009
A continuing travelogue brough to you by Sealand Travel.
Part three of our journey to the best historic sites to visit worldwide takes us to the Midwestern United States. It is made up 12 states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
European settlement of the Midwest began in the 17th century first by the French and followed later by the British. The Midwest provokes images of the French fur traders following the many lakes and river systems covering much of the area. In fact, the mighty Mississippi runs through the Midwest and was forever ingrained in our memories by the famous author Samuel Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain.
Mark Twain has become a part of history, perhaps a more upbeat part of history to explore than the many wars we could discuss. The Mark Twain House and Museum is a wonderful tourist attraction for us to start out at on our journey through the Midwest.
Samuel Clemens lived in the late 1800’s to 1910 and is known to many as the American author. The Mark Twain House and Museum makes a great addition to any historic trek across the Midwest. Located in Hartford, Connecticut, it consists of many options for the history buff. As one of our defining cultural figures, we have the chance to see what life was like for people in that time in the Midwest.
The Mark Twain House and Museum offers living history tours dealing with the entire era, not just the subject of Mark Twain alone. One exhibit offered is the “origins of baseball’s ‘color line’”. This exhibit informs its onlookers as to the increasing racism in society as reflected in sports. Another interesting feature, perhaps more for the kids or at least the kids at heart is the Lego replica of Twains house, which was part of the LEGO road show in the 1980’s!
The house alone is a wonderful journey to the past. Then new technologies such as a gravity flow heat system, and one of the first telephones to be installed in a private home are found here. Many interiors created by Tiffany and various other cultures and styles exist to inspire and amuse to visitor the this historic house.
The museum also offers another opportunity to absorb some history, created in the present. Opened in 2003, visitors have to chance to explore Twains life both good and bad as told or illustrated by many of Twains peers as well as through artifacts containing manuscripts, photos, and many changing exhibits. This makes the Mark Twain House and Museum a highlight of any trip to the Midwest.
Let’s travel now to one of my favorite spots in the world, Michigan. The Great Lakes have their own history of many ill fated ships that helped to created what Michigan is today.
“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee.”
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the “Gales of November” came early.”
from “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot
Stories abound in the Great Lakes with tales such as this. From iron ore from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, mined from the mountains covering its countryside, to great ships full of timber from the lower peninsula of Michigan heading for growing cities across the lakes, the number of shipwrecks historically in the great lakes is in the thousands!
If this is the kind of history that interests you, opportunities abound in the Lake States of the Midwest. Located in Paradise, a well known maritime museum lies in the vast unspoiled wilderness of Michigan. Called the Great Lake Shipwreck Museum, it also includes a wonderful lighthouse on Whitefish Point.
Here you will have the chance to travel back in time to 1861 to the lighthouse keepers quarters of the oldest active lighthouse on Lake Superior. The museum holds artifacts from 13 local shipwrecks, one being the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Guests even have the opportunity to sleep in the crews quarters, and if you go in the off season, May to November, you are even entitled to a private tour and membership to the Shipwreck Society. In the gales that strike early and hard in the Great Lakes, many ships went down without a trace and ghost stories abound. Even lighthouses invoke ghostly images of keepers long past haunting the lighthouses still today.
Say yes to Michigan and other states in the Midwest, a spectacular place to vacation for a look back at our nations history.
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Travel Back in Time – A Continuing Travelogue the Best Historic Sites Part III The Midwest…
European settlement of the Midwest began in the 17th century first by the French and followed later by the British. The Midwest provokes images of the French fur traders following the many lakes and river systems covering much of the area. In fact, the…