Historical Societies Near Me in Davenport

In the heart of downtown Seattle, light-filled galleries invite you to wander through our collections, temporary installations, and special exhibitions from around the world. Our collections include Asian, African, Ancient American, Ancient Mediterranean, Islamic, European, Oceanic, Asian, American, modern and contemporary art, and decorative arts and design. Visitors especially enjoy our remarkable Native American galleries and our exceptional collection of Australian Aboriginal ‹art. ‹

Mission Statement

The Museum of Pop Culture's mission is to make creative expression a life-changing force by offering experiences that inspire and connect our communities.

History:-

Your tour includes visiting two homestead cabins built in the 1880’s and learn about the families who built and lived in them. Do the chores that pioneer children would have done in our log activity cabin such as: grinding grains, churning cream, scrubbing laundry, and carding wool. You may dress up like pioneers, get you hair curled with a old curling iron and shave with a dulled straight razor.

Helping with the barn chores includes: gathering eggs, milk the cow (or goat, which ever is available), pet and visit all the animals in the barn. You may even try a jump into the hay pile, feet first please.

Work in the blacksmith shop, heat up a horseshoe in the forge, pound or bend the shoe.

Move on to the wood shop and pound nails, use a bit and brace to drill, spud bark from a log, saw some wood with a buck  saw, and shape wood with a draw knife.

Visit our replica Ohop Lutheran Mission schoolhouse. Rules and punishments for both students and teachers are hanging on the wall inside.

An hour and a half tour from season to season through the forest and the Ohop Indian Village

Your tour guide will help you do the same things that native people did at different times of the year.

The Spring and Summer Village will give you an opportunity to try target shooting with the bow and arrow, match animals game, use a bow drill and more.

The Fall Fishing Village is where you may try your hand at making a slate arrowhead, braid leather, pecking on a stone bowl, help to chip out a canoe, play the plank drum and target practice games.

The Winter Home will allow you to dress up in native style clothes, try Salish loom weaving, grind in a stone bowl, make a bracelet to take home and play indian  basketball.

All of the seasons will show you how the Coast Salish people encouraged game playing to teach their children how to learn, listen and respect their enviroment.

Our Vision

LeMay - Our Vision

LeMay - America's Car Museum (ACM) spotlights America's love affair with the automobile.  Featuring a nine-acre campus - with a four-story museum as the centerpiece - ACM, situated atop Tacoma, Wash., 30 minutes south of Seattle and in the shadow of Mt. Rainier, is one of the world's largest auto museums and attractions when it opened in June 2012.

America's Car Museum is designed to preserve history and celebrate the world's automotive culture.  The spacious facility houses up to 350 cars, trucks and motorcycles from private owners, corporations, and the LeMay collection, which amassed a Guinness Book record of more than 3,500 vehicles in the mid-'90s.

"Everybody remembers their first car, family driving vacations, a sports car they fell in love with as a teenager," says ACM CEO David Madeira. "Personal experiences with cars are at the heart of the American experience, and we're going to showcase more than a century of automotive lifestyle and history as well as the future of transportation."

The America's Car Museum Vision:

Become the gathering place where automotive enthusiasts from around the globe celebrate America's love affair with the automobile.

Create social networks for auto enthusiasts, serious collectors and educational entities.

Portray present achievements and future directions in the transportation industry, including design, technology and products.

Develop an education center/library to promote automotive history, restoration and preservation.

The America's Car Museum Mission:

The LeMay - ACM is a non-profit organization chartered to preserve and interpret the history and technology of the automobile and its influence on American culture. The museum is dedicated to securing and interpreting the valuable LeMay Collection and to acquiring, preserving and interpreting additional artifacts that explore broad themes of American mobility lifestyle in an instructive and entertaining manner. The Museum will sustain its vital public service through viable, professional operations and complementary alliances.

About Us:-

Tacoma Art Museum was founded by a group of volunteers in 1935 and has since grown to become a national model for regional, mid-sized museums. The museum is dedicated to exhibiting and collecting Northwest art, with the mission of connecting people through art. The museum’s permanent collection includes the premier collection of Dale Chihuly’s glass artwork on permanent public display. 

Tacoma Art Museum opened its current facility on May 3, 2003, when it moved from a former bank building that was built in 1920. Nearly twice the size of its previous building, Tacoma Art Museum’s new $22-million Antoine Predock-designed structure provides the space to exhibit more of the permanent collection. In designing the building, Predock drew inspiration from the region’s light, its relationship to the water, the neighborhood’s industrial history and character, Mount Rainier, the Thea Foss Waterway, and the surrounding structures in what is now known as the Museum District.

Mission and Vision

Tacoma Art Museum serves the diverse communities of the Northwest through its collection, exhibitions, and learning programs, emphasizing art and artists from the Northwest. Our vision is to be a national model for regional museums by creating a dynamic museum that engages, inspires, and builds community through art.

MISSION STATEMENT:

The Museum of Northwest Art connects people with the art, diverse cultures and environments of the Northwest.

VISION STATEMENT

The Museum of Northwest Art enriches lives in our diverse community by fostering essential conversations and encouraging creativity through exhibitions and educational activities that explore the art of the Northwest.

History
The inspiration began in the 1930s and 40s when four Northwest artists, Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves and Mark Tobey, who drew artistic sustenance from nature and Asian influences, created a fresh style and a regional identity. All of these artists spent time in the Skagit Valley, and two made their homes here. A magnet for artists since then, the Valley was a natural birthplace for a museum devoted solely to Northwest art.

The museum opened on October 3, 1981, as a small regional museum devoted to presenting the works of major Northwest artists in a continual exhibition and serving as a source of education on Northwest art. The vision of photographer Art Hupy, the museum lived, for its first 14 years, on the second floor of the historical Gaches Mansion in La Conner. As early as 1982 the museum board began to look for a space more suitable for housing works of art when they contemplated the purchase and renovation of the La Conner Town Hall. Plans for relocation and expansion simmered over the next decade while support for the regional museum grew. During this time the museum mounted exhibitions designed to illuminate both the artist and their art.

In 1991 the museum board and a legion of volunteers began a major fundraising drive to acquire a new home. About that time, a commercial building in downtown La Conner, featuring 12,000 square feet intended for retail and office space, came on the market. After two years of negotiation the deal closed and renovations began. Given a fresh face, inside and out, by the Henry Klein Partnership, Architects, the new building has an elegance befitting a museum destined to attract national attention.

Paralleling some of the specialized regional museums in Europe, MoNA has stressed high quality standards from the beginning. With no permanent collection initially, the museum now has a small but fine representative collection of paintings, sculpture, glass and works on paper. The new facility provides proper space for their care and conservation with room for the permanent collection to grow. The mission of the museum has expanded from its original purpose to showcase just a few major Northwest artists and includes exhibition opportunities for the many fine artists of the Pacific Northwest, including promising new talent. The museum also shows the finest in Northwest glass in its Benaroya Glass Gallery. The building also allows for an increase in educational activities - workshops, tours, lectures and work with school groups. Coincidentally, history circles back on itself and the new Museum of Northwest Art opened its doors to the public in October, 1995, 14 years to the day after the original vision got its start.

About SPARK

SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention is a 501(c)(3) non-profit science and history museum located in beautiful Bellingham, WA. Lightning strikes several times a day at the Museum, where thousands of visitors experience the marvelous history, science, and power of electricity.

SPARK’s Mission:

The Spark Museum of Electrical Invention provides exciting and educational experiences for audiences of all ages and backgrounds through innovative programs and a world-class collection of artifacts representing the historic development of electricity, radio, and early technology. SPARK embraces the wonder and mystery of electricity.

The Museum’s roots go back to 1985 as an informal collection of radio sets, spare parts, schematics, recordings, and vintage magazines and manuals owned by a Bellingham resident, Jonathan Winter. In 2001, John Jenkins, a former sales and marketing executive at Microsoft, added his extensive collection to the Museum, which included early wireless and electrical devices, and rare books with first editions dating back to 1560. The two moved their collection into its current location at 1312 Bay Street in Downtown Bellingham and the “American Museum of Radio and Electricity” was born. What once was two private collections became a public treasure devoted to science and technology education.

In 2012, Jenkins decided to broaden the focus of the Museum from radio history to include, as he describes it, the “wonder and mystery of electricity.” The Museum changed its name to SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention, added the giant MegaZapper Tesla coil to the collection, and a phenomenon was born. Museum visitation grew quickly, jumping from 5,000 in 2011 to 15,000 just two years later. By the end of 2017 visitation reached 20,000 people, six in 10 of whom are from outside Whatcom County.

Today, SPARK is a place where visitors can get charged about science and discovery while surrounded by one of the most significant and complete collections of its kind in the world. The Museum’s collection contains a wealth of unique and rare artifacts dating from the earliest days of scientific electrical experiments in the 1600’s through the 1940’s and the Golden Age of Radio.

The Museum houses the largest collection of 19th century electromagnetic apparatus found in any private collection, and rare music boxes, early phonographs, and many examples of radio broadcasting technology and memorabilia from the best-known radio companies and broadcasters. The collection also includes rare and original books, treatises and scientific papers by such authors as Gilbert, Newton, Galileo, Franklin, Volta, Hertz, and Marconi. The exhibits and artifacts on display at SPARK Museum have been referred to as a local version of Smithsonian!

Your generosity allows the Museum to continue serving thousands of visitors every year with the best in interactive learning and entertainment. Donations are tax deductible; financial gifts support and sustain the Museum’s science education program, interactive galleries, exhibit spaces and displays.

To preserve, collect and interpret Naval undersea history, science and operations for the benefit of the US Navy and the people of the United States.

Deception Pass is Washington's most-visited state park for a reason. Mysterious coves, rugged cliffs, jaw-dropping sunsets, and a stomach-dropping high bridge make this park a go-to for locals and international travelers alike.

Families can fish and swim in Cranberry Lake. Beach explorers look for shells along miles of Puget Sound beachfront. Hikers can trek through forests and out along bluffs. And birdwatchers fill their field guides with notes. You may see a whale or a family of seals as you gaze on wild waters.

Your inner explorer will delight in learning Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) history at Bowman Bay. The CCC was Franklin D. Roosevelt's Depression-era "Tree Army;" it employed nearly 3 million men and built many of America's state and national parks. An extended stay at Deception Pass will have you peering into tide pools at Rosario Beach, boating at Cornet Bay, strolling on North and West beaches and gaping up at Hoypus Forest, a lowland old-growth forest.

You, your family and your out-of-town guests will be awestruck by the area's beauty and history, and you'll soon be planning your return.

Park Features

Deception Pass State Park spreads over 3,854 acres, a marine and camping park with 77,000 feet of saltwater shoreline and 33,900 feet of freshwater shoreline on three lakes. The park is actually located on two islands — Fidalgo to the north and Whidbey to the south. The Canoe Pass and Deception Pass bridges connect the two islands, creating a gateway for exploration.

Our Mission

The Hands On Children's Museum stimulates curiosity, creativity and critical thinking through fun, interactive and engaging exhibits and learning experiences for children, families and the community.

The Museum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Our Vision

Hands On inspires all children to love to learn regardless of ethnicity, ability, gender, or income. We aspire to be the premier provider of interactive art and science education, fostering early foundational skills for success in school and in life.

Our Values

- Exciting, Engaging Experiences – We delight our visitors with a treasured facility, exceptional service, and engaging early learning experiences.

- Experiential Learning – We believe in the intrinsic value of play and that whole child learning encourages curiosity and academic success. We support parents in their role as their child's first teacher & partner in learning.

- Access for All – All children deserve respect and the opportunity to learn, regardless of their ethnicity, ability, gender, or income.

- Community Partnerships – We believe that communities are enriched when diverse groups work creatively together to educate our children.

- Young Makers – We encourage tinkering, making and investigation to build meaningful math and science learning. In the early years, math literacy is the greatest predictor of school success.

- Good for You! Healthy Lifestyles Initiative – Healthy children learn best. We provide abundant play experiences, a deep connection to nature, and healthy food choices to improve a child's wellbeing. We are committed to green practices in our facility, exhibits and education programs.

History:-

In the late 1960s Ken Balcomb, Camille Goebel, and Rick Chandler created a small organization called the Moclips Cetalogical Society, based in Moclips, Washington, for the purpose of studying whales.

In 1976, the society moved to San Juan Island to study orcas. With a contract from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the organization began the Orca Survey to research the Southern Resident Community of orcas. As a result of this and other studies, the American and Canadian governments agreed to stop live-capture operations. Numerous volunteers, including former director Dr. Richard Osborne, took part in those early studies.

In 1978 Balcomb, as president of the Moclips Cetalogical Society, joined together with fellow whale researcher Mark Anderson to find a building to create a museum about whales. They rented the upstairs of the historic Odd Fellows Hall in Friday Harbor, for $75 a month. The Museum is still there.

For the next several months hundreds of volunteers worked miracles to refurbish the building and create exhibits for a grand opening in the summer of 1979.

Anderson became the first director of the Museum, and a board of directors was established. The Moclips Cetalogical Society retained its board, with its members also sitting on the board of The Whale Museum. In 1981 the two boards merged.

Meanwhile, ambitious Museum workers kept busy. Those early days saw the beginning of a minke whale study in the Salish Sea by the late Eleanor Dorsey of the New York Zoological Society, an acoustics study of whale sounds, and a college-accredited course on cetology called Whale School.

The Odd Fellows HallIn 1981 the board and Balcomb agreed that the Museum should focus on education and on supporting research, with the Orca Survey continuing with photo-identification. Thus, Balcomb left the Museum and started the Center for Whale Research, where the important work of the Orca Survey continues to this day.

The year 1983 was significant to The Whale Museum as it was the year that Lime Kiln Point State Park--also known as "whale watch park"--was created. Thanks to the support of Secretary of State Ralph Munro for a proposal written by Osborne, and the negotiating skills of then-director Peter Capen, the Moclips Cetological Society acquired the lease from the Coast Guard for the Lime Kiln Point lighthouse. The lighthouse was set up as a shore-based research lab for acoustic and behavioral studies on orcas, minke whales and Dall's porpoises. It's still used by researchers today. The acquisition of the lighthouse led to efforts by the Museum and the state to create the first park in the country dedicated to whale watching. Currently, the park hosts more than 200,000 visitors per year.

The following spring, at a press conference with the Secretary of State, the Museum announced the beginning of the revenue-generating Orca Adoption Program and a then-pending congressional bill banning the capture of orcas for display, which eventually passed.

In the summer of 1986 the Museum became nationally famous when it led efforts to free 130 marine mammals that had been trapped by a fast-moving glacier in Southeast Alaska. Also that summer, after five years of operating the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, the Museum received federal approval to become an official stranding response center in the San Juans--a role the Museum still maintains.

In 1987 The Whale Museum reached a milestone: 30,000 people came to visit!

In 1988, the Museum was awarded a grant from the state to produce a traveling exhibit on "Marine Mammals as Indicators of the Health of Puget Sound." And, under the auspices of the Museum, Osborne teamed up with fellow whale researchers John Calambokidis and the late Eleanor Dorsey to write a book titled "A Guide to Marine Mammals of Greater Puget Sound." Exhibits Curator Albert Shepard contributed to the numerous orca identification illustrations.

In 1989 the Museum board bought the Odd Fellows Hall (an historic building in the Town of Friday Harbor, constructed in 1892). The purchase allowed the exhibit space to double in size!

The following year, the Museum co-hosted the Third International Orca Symposium in Victoria, B.C. For the second year in a row, the Museum won a $30,000 general support grant from the Institute for Museum Services, and Executive Director Susan Vernon attended the award ceremony at the White House. The Museum won a third grant from the IMS in 1991.

Adding to its education mission, supervised, educational "pajama parties" for children began in 1992 in a new program called Pod Nods. The program still exists.

June 1993 saw the beginning of what continues to be one of the Museum's most noted endeavors: the on-the-water Soundwatch Boater Education Program. It began with the cooperation of the Massachusetts-based School for Field Studies, with the purpose of teaching pleasure boaters the least intrusive way to watch whales from a boat.

In 1994 the Museum's Orca Adoption Program got a tremendous boost when Warner Bros. added a public service announcement about the program to their popular "Free Willy" video. The Orca Adoption Program reached a record 50,000 adopters!

Another successful program was instituted at the Museum in 1994: the first Marine Naturalist Training Program. Students learned about the marine ecosystem in a series of classes and, after graduation, went on to become docents at the Museum, interpreters at Lime Kiln Point State Park, or guides on commercial whale-watch boats. The program continues, and has been endorsed by the Whale Watch Operators Association Northwest.

In the summer of 1995 the Museum hosted a powerful exhibit about the Exxon Valdez spill called "Darkened Waters: Profiles of an Oil Spill."

Also that year, Museum educators began visiting schools in Puget Sound through the Outbreach Program. The program offers introductory presentations on whales and marine conservation to fifth-graders.

Late in 1996 the ongoing Gray Whale Project for students began. It came about as the result of a dead gray whale that washed up on an island beach. After several months of decomposition, Museum staff cleaned and prepared the bones. Now, in a series of workshops teaching them about marine ecology, students articulate the skeleton.

Also in 1996 The Whale Museum joined the high-tech world when its Web page went online (www.whalemuseum.org).

A surprising event took place that autumn. For the first time in recorded history, members of L Pod spent 30 days in Dyes Inlet, in south Puget Sound. The novelty drew hundreds of boaters and created "media frenzy." Soundwatch personnel were dispatched to help control the crowd. The whales eventually escaped and the episode resulted in an exciting exhibit at the Museum.

A portion of the Museum building's master plan was implemented in 1997 when the store was moved downstairs. Besides increasing the size of the store, the move allowed for the addition of an art gallery on the first floor.

The creation of another, highly acclaimed exhibit at The Whale Museum began in 1999: "Storm Boy," based on the award-winning children's book by Paul Owen Lewis. A major portion of it remains as part of the Mythology exhibit.

In order to begin an underwater acoustic study of orcas' vocalizations, the Museum in 2000 received its largest grant ever. The resulting SeaSound Remote Sensing Network continues today and furthers researchers' understanding of underwater acoustics.

In 2002 the Orca Adoption Program was honored when the Samish Indian Nation took part in naming an orca calf and invited the Museum's board and staff to a traditional naming ceremony for J-37 (Hy'Shqa).

One of the most important highlights of the last five years has been the Museum's efforts to get more protection for the Southern Resident orcas. Data collected, compiled and archived by the Museum has been used in several governmental studies to determine if the orcas should receive federal protection. And greater awareness of the threats facing the orcas has contributed to funding for Soundwatch from the federal government, as well as increased international cooperation on whale watching. Examples are the Museum's partnership with the Canadian Marine Mammal Monitoring Project, and with both U.S. and Canadian federal governments in the cross-border "Be Whale Wise" campaign.

In 2002-2003 Soundwatch also assisted in the monitoring of L-98 (Luna), an orphaned orca in Canada. The Museum played a pivotal role in fundraising for both L-98 and A-73, another orphaned orca, by administering grant and donor funds.

Another significant event occurred in 2003 when the Museum's Marine Mammal Stranding Network responded to a report of a 53-foot-long fin whale carcass in the Salish Sea. Following the necropsy at the University of Washington Friday Harbor Labs, the carcass was sunk and became a project study on decomposition, using an underwater camera mounted to a remote-operated vehicle.

Also over the last five years, the Museum has expanded and diversified the Education Program. Besides a substantial increase in group tours visiting the Museum and the growing popularity of marine stewardship classes, the Outbreach Program conducted educational activities as far away as Texas and California.

Mission

The Northwest Carriage Museum preserves, maintains and interprets a collection of horse drawn vehicles and period artifacts of the 19th-century, creating a cultural experience for all visitors.

We are home to 60 beautiful horse-drawn vehicles including carriages, buggies, wagons and sleighs, and  hundreds of historical artifacts that help bring history to life!

We are dedicated to keeping history alive for future generations, educating about horse-drawn transportation, restoration and conservation of the vehicles and supporting our local community. 

The museum is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization so your donation may be tax-deductible (Tax ID Number #91-2027251); consult your tax preparer for more information. In accordance with state recommendations for nonprofit organizations.