ken56 wrote:
A little story about a small town museum and visitor center being interesting. We live in Dandridge TN and stopped in because we hadn't been in before. The man inside told us about a German couple who stopped and asked him where Douglas Dam was because they could not find it. He told him that he had been a young officer in the German army and was tasked with taking a small group of men to blow up the dam.
. Back roads do lead to some interesting and very informative tiny museums. Two tiny towns with fascinating museums I can think of are in Granada, CO, on US 50 and Folsom, NM on NM 551.
Granada was the site of the Amache Japanese internment camp during WWII. The history teacher at Granada High School taught a class about the camp during the WWII portion of his American history class. The students got so interested that they began a years-long camp restoration project, a museum in town, and a collection of oral histories from both townspeople and internees. If you are on US 50 headed in the direction of Lamar, CO or Garden City KS be sure to stop!
Folsom Village was the site of the famous archeological dig that discovered a Pleistocene bison with a spear point still stuck in a bone. The discovery moved the date of the earliest man in North America back 7,000 years and gave a name to an entire culture. Folsom was also where Black Jack Ketchum was captured after a train robbery. He was tried and hanged in nearby Clayton, but the Folsom museum has photos and newspaper articles about both of its "claims to fame", as well as numerous antique implements and family heirlooms typical of small town museums. If you are on US 87 headed toward CO or Taos, take a short detour to Folsom and a drive to the top of the nearly perfect cinder cone at Capulin Volcano National Monument.
Happy travels!
