558 Best Sights in USA

The town's Victorian-era municipal building, built in 1876, displays Archibald Willard's painting The Spirit of '76. Many visitors, familiar since childhood with this image of the three Revolutionary veterans with fife, drum, and flag, are surprised to find the original in an otherwise unassuming town hall. Also on-site is a small naval museum exploring Marblehead's maritime past.

A video introduction, a wall of names of Acadian Louisiana refugees, an audio tour, and a huge mural relate the odyssey of the Acadians. Behind the small heritage center containing these memorials, an eternal flame and the coats of arms of Acadian families pay tribute to their cultural and physical stamina.

The Acadian Museum is filled to the rafters with memorabilia donated by local folks—antique radios, butter churns, patchwork quilts, and yellowed newspaper clippings are all part of the mix. An exhibit on Joseph “Beausoleil” Broussard, who in 1765 led the first group of Acadians migrating to Louisiana, was one of many interesting collections.

The Baker Heritage Museum operates the nearby Adler House Museum, an 1889 Italianate house that was once home to an eccentric publishing magnate and philanthropist.

Opened in the Bicentennial year of 1976, this is the first museum of its kind funded and built by a city. The centerpiece is "Audacious Freedom: African Americans in Philadelphia 1776–1876," an interactive and immersive exhibit that uses technology to tell the stories of pioneers in the freedom movement. The list includes Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a suffragist and conductor on the Underground Railroad; Thomas Morris Chester, the first black lawyer to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court; and Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, a renowned singer who performed for Queen Victoria. Visiting and rotating exhibitions dive deep into the artistic, cultural, and political contributions of African Americans. The museum's gift shop stocks one of the city’s widest selections of books on black culture, history, fiction, poetry, and drama, along with textiles, sculpture, jewelry, prints, and tiles.

The museum's quarterly exhibits chronicle the history of Black people in America. Videos illustrate the story of Sweet Auburn, the name bestowed on Auburn Avenue by businessman John Wesley Dobbs, who fostered business development for African Americans on this street.

Make a day of visiting APEX and the Auburn Avenue Research Library, with lunch at The Municipal Market (previously the Sweet Auburn Curb Market). All three are within a short walking distance.

The area's horse farms have produced many national champions. Exhibits include horse-related decorations, paintings, and sculptures, plus racing silks and trophies. The Hall of Fame is on the grounds of the 14-acre Hopelands Gardens, where you can wind along paths past quiet terraces and reflecting pools. There's also a Touch and Scent Trail with Braille plaques.

More than three millennia of human history in the Ventura region is charted in the archaeological exhibits at this small museum. Some of the relics on display date back to 1600 BC.

Maui's largest landowner, A&B was one of the "Big Five" companies that spearheaded the planting, harvesting, and processing of sugarcane. At this museum, historic photos, artifacts, and documents explain the introduction of sugarcane to Hawaii. Exhibits reveal how plantations brought in laborers from other countries, forever changing the islands' ethnic mix. Although sugarcane is no longer being grown on Maui, the crop was for many years the mainstay of the local economy. You can find the museum in a small, restored plantation manager's house across the street from the post office and the still-operating sugar refinery, where smoke billows up when the cane is being processed. The museum gift shop sells plantation-themed memorabilia, coffee, and history books.

This home of town founder Jean Mouton was originally built in 1800 as his maison dimanche, or "Sunday house" (a town house used when attending church services). After Jean, the house became home to Alexandre Mouton (1804–85), the first Democratic governor of Louisiana. Today, this galleried town house with a mid-19th-century addition preserves local history. The older section is an excellent example of early Acadian architecture and contains artifacts used by settlers. The main museum features Civil War–era furnishings and memorabilia and an exhibit on Mardi Gras. Guided and self-guided tours are both available.

This collection, devoted to the history of African Americans in Alexandria and Virginia, is housed in part in the Robert H. Robinson Library, a building constructed in the wake of a landmark 1939 sit-in protesting the segregation of Alexandria libraries. The Watson Reading Room, next to the museum, holds a vast collection of books, periodicals, videos, and historical documents detailing the social, economic, and cultural contributions of African Americans who helped shape the city's growth since its establishment in 1749. The federal census of 1790 recorded 52 free African Americans living in the city, but the town was one of the largest slave-exporting points in the South, with at least two highly active slave markets.

Home to one of the largest collections of Alaska Native materials in the world, the Alutiiq Museum contains archaeological and ethnographic items dating back 7,500 years. The more than 150,000 artifacts include harpoons, masks, dolls, stone tools, seal-gut parkas, grass baskets, and pottery fragments. The museum store sells Alaska Native art and educational materials. There are also ongoing workshops and live Alutiiq dance performances.

One of the few museums in the country devoted entirely to clocks and watches, this 1801 house has more than 5,500 timepieces on display. Though the majority of them are American timepieces dating 1800–1940, the museum does have clocks dating to 1680 and watches dating as far back as 1595. Many of the clocks are kept running and chiming, making the museum a prime place to be when the big hand strikes "12." The gift shop is worth a stop to browse the clock-themed items including jewelry and ornaments made from clock gears and chocolate alarm clocks and gear-shaped chocolates.

Guided tours of this museum that celebrates the nation's birth focus on the family who lived here during the Revolutionary War. Among 3,000 artifacts, see drafts of the U.S. Constitution and the first Purple Heart, as well as letters and documents written by George Washington and the household furnishings of John Taylor Gilman, one of New Hampshire's early governors. In July, the museum hosts the two-week American Independence Festival, and occasional architectural tours are offered, too.

This intriguing attraction honors police officers. In addition to movie memorabilia like the Robocop costume and Blade Runner car, informative displays offer insight into the dangers officers face every day: drug dealers, homicides, and criminals who can create knives from dental putty and guns from a bicycle spoke. Other exhibits spotlight the gory history of capital punishment (from hangings to the guillotine to the electric chair) and crime scene investigation, terrorism, and a poignant memorial rotunda where more than 10,000 names are etched in marble to honor police officers who have died in the line of duty. A 24-stall shooting range provides rental guns.

This neoclassical building in FDR Park celebrates Swedish contributions to American history. The Swedes settled the Delaware Valley in the mid-1600s, and it was a pair of Swedish brothers who sold William Penn the land that became Philadelphia. Modeled after a 17th-century Swedish manor house, the museum features galleries and rooms that concentrate on specific eras and industrious characters. The John Ericsson Room honors the designer of the Civil War ship the USS Monitor; the Jenny Lind Room contains memorabilia from the P. T. Barnum–led American tour the soprano known as the “Swedish Nightingale” embarked upon in 1850. Other rooms display handmade dolls, crafts, paintings, and drawings, all in addition to rotating cultural exhibitions. It's not the most riveting place on paper, but the unconventional location, combined with its examination of overlooked history, make for an interesting visit.

Texas Canyon is the home of the Amerind Foundation (a contraction of "American" and "Indian"), founded by amateur archaeologist William Fulton in 1937 to foster understanding about Native American cultures. The research facility and museum are housed in a Spanish colonial–style structure designed by noted Tucson architect H. M. Starkweather. The museum's rotating displays of archaeological materials, crafts, and photographs give an overview of Native American cultures of the Southwest and Mexico.

The adjacent Fulton–Hayden Memorial Art Gallery displays an assortment of art collected by William Fulton. Permanent exhibits include the work of Tohono O'odham women potters, an exquisite collection of Hopi kachina dolls, prized paintings by acclaimed Hopi artists, Pueblo pottery ranging from prehistoric pieces to modern ceramics, and archaeological exhibits on the Indigenous cultures of the prehistoric Southwest. The museum's gift shop has a superlative selection of Native American art, crafts, and jewelry. Beautiful picnic areas among the boulders can accommodate large and small groups.

This site has been home to a Quaker gathering place since 1682. The current simple-lined building, constructed in 1804 for the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, is still used for that purpose, as well as for weekly services. Among the most influential members in the 19th century was Lucretia Mott (1793–1880), a leader in the women's suffrage, antiwar, and antislavery movements. A small museum in the building presents a series of dioramas and a slide show depicting the life and accomplishments of William Penn (1644–1718), who gave this land to the Society of Friends. Tours take place during the day April through October, and by appointment only November through March.

The museum has exhibits exploring the history of Southern Arizona, starting with the Indigenous Hohokam Tribe and the Spanish explorers. The harrowing Life on the Edge: A History of Medicine in Arizona exhibit promotes a new appreciation of modern drugstores in present-day Tucson. Children enjoy the exhibit on copper mining (with an atmospheric replica of a mine shaft and camp) and the stagecoaches in the transportation area.

The library has an extensive collection of historic Arizona photographs and sells inexpensive reprints. Park in the garage at the corner of 2nd and Euclid streets and get a free parking pass in the museum.

Sharing space with the visitor center, this museum provides a nostalgic look at the evolution of the famous route that started as a footpath followed by prehistoric Native Americans and evolved into a length of pavement that reached from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California. The Route 66 Electric Vehicle Museum, a semipermanent display inside the museum, features electric vehicles on loan from the Historic Electric Vehicle Foundation. Memory Lane, also inside the Powerhouse building where the museum is housed, is a store crammed with kitschy souvenirs.

Inside the main gate of the university is Arizona's oldest museum, dating from territorial days (1893) and a preeminent resource for the study of Southwestern cultures. Exhibits include the largest collections of Southwest Native American pottery and basketry, as well as Paths of Life: American Indians of the Southwest—a permanent exhibit that explores the cultural traditions, origins, and contemporary lives of 10 native tribes of Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.

Run by the Miami Design Preservation League, the center provides information about the buildings in the district. There's also an official Art Deco Museum within the center, as well as a gift shop that sells art deco memorabilia and posters from the 1930s through '50s, as well as books on Miami's history. Several tours also start here, including a self-guided audio tour and regular morning walking tours at 10:30 daily (excluding Tuesday and Wednesday).

Built by sea captain Joseph C. Atwood in 1752, this museum has a gambrel roof, hand-hewn floor planks, an old kitchen with a wide hearth, and a beehive oven. The Joseph C. Lincoln Room has the manuscripts, first editions, and mementos of the Chatham writer; antique tools are displayed in an additional gallery. There's also a portrait gallery featuring Chatham-born sea captains, painted by Frederick S. Wight. In a remodeled freight shed are the stunning and provocative murals (1932–45) by Alice Stallknecht Wight portraying religious scenes in Chatham settings. On the grounds are an herb garden, the old turret and lens from the Chatham Light, and a simple camp house rescued from eroding North Beach.

Part of the College of Charleston, this museum and archive was once a school for African Americans, training students for professional careers from approximately 1865 to 1954. The collections here focus on the civil rights movement, but also include artifacts from the era of chattel slavery, such as badges, manacles, and bills of sale, as well as other materials from throughout African American history.

Located in a stately brick building that once housed the community's swimming pool, Baker's history center has one of the most impressive rock collections in the West. Assembled over a lifetime by a local amateur geologist, the Cavin-Warfel Collection includes thunder eggs, glowing phosphorescent rocks, and a 950-pound hunk of quartz. Other exhibits highlight pioneering, ranching, gold mining, and antique furniture.

In the old city hall building, this museum depicts the area's early history, including Native American artifacts, logging, fishing, cranberry farming, and the disastrous 1936 fire that destroyed the city. The well-stocked gift shop has books, knickknacks, jewelry, myrtlewood, and other little treasures.

The story of New Iberia's Spanish colonial roots and the role of Bayou Teche in helping nurture Cajun culture are on display in this small, well-organized museum, housed in a historic building that was once a grocery. Interactive exhibits cover the area's history, its colorful characters, and its culture. The museum's interior layout is based on the snakelike curves of Bayou Teche itself. Visitors can admire a depiction of the French explorer LaSalle, the man who claimed Louisiana for King Louis XIV, by famed muralist Robert Dafford.