History, Alive and Kicking

Learning About Early America and Loving It

On a sultry summer day, one of the last places a child may want to be is inside a stuffy dark museum. But a crop of museums across the country do much of their teaching outside, in re-created villages and forts, where strolling inside can feel like stepping back in time.

Old Sturbridge Village

Of the group, kids may find Massachusetts's Old Sturbridge Village most appealing. The attraction is an assemblage of historic homes and shops hauled here from places like Vermont and Connecticut and built to resemble a bustling New England town circa 1838. After they dress up in period costume (think casual Amish), children can join a daily baseball game, new this summer. But here, the bases, which are sticks, are run clockwise.

Even if it rains, Sturbridge goes on, as kids tend to head for Kidstory, a two-year-old enclosed space where they can learn to raise a bucket from a well or play with a reproduction of Jacob's ladder.

Costumed "interpreters" at Sturbridge speak in a third-person voice. If you ask them why the baseball can be thrown at the runners, the interpreters can break character and compare it to the modern sport. Other kids might like the ever-present animals, which this summer include oinking Gloucestershire Old Spot piglets and a team of young oxen, yoked for the first time. Adults pay $20 for tickets, while kids aged 3 to 17 cost $6. Both are good for two visits in 10 days.

Colonial Williamsburg

Matching Sturbridge in terms of interactivity may be Colonial Williamsburg, a Virginia town that was a thriving metropolis before America was officially born, and which still boasts -- courtesy of a massive preservation effort -- beautifully restored mansions.

There, kids can grab pieces of wood and march around with men who are training for the coming revolution in the public square known as the "powder magazine." They can also stop by the brick-making pit, take off their shoes, and give the clay mix a good slog.

"They get to play in the mud and no one gets mad at them," said Jim Bradley, the park's public affairs manager.

Unlike Sturbridge, the "actor-interpreters" here -- a few dozen of the hundreds of employees wearing costumes -- speak as if they know nothing beyond the 1700s and even the most smart-alecky kids have a tough time tripping them up.

In fact, the man who plays Thomas Jefferson, who went to school at nearby William and Mary, uses T.J.'s exact phrasings, Bradley said.

Three million people a year visit Colonial Williamsburg and traipsing through much of it doesn't require a ticket. Still, if your family wants to get behind the braided ropes, a one-day pass will cost $34 for adults and $15 for kids ages 6 to 17.

Fort Nisqually

Living-history museums are rarer on the West Coast, but Fort Nisqually, located in Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, Washington, is making a respectable go at it.

Named for a local Native American tribe, Fort Nisqually is a palisade-encircled site with a couple original buildings from the 1850s. In terms of European colonies, that's about as old as it gets in this area. The site is all that remains of the once sprawling, 161,000-acre fur-trapping frontier business named the Hudson Bay Company which controlled the coast from Oregon to Canada.