10 Living History Sites To Love

Interpreters here play roles of actual Plimoth colony residents in 1627. Don't be surprised if one asks youngsters to lend a hand patching a mud wall, drying herbs, or watering a garden. At the adjacent Wampanoag Homesite, Native Americans explain tribal culture through craft activities and storytelling. The kids may grind corn, play 17th-century games, and feed wildflowers to resident rare-breed goats. The Mayflower II, a re-creation of the famed ship, is the place to learn how to tie nautical knots and read a compass.

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Plimoth Plantation

This town is home to tradesmen such as potters, blacksmiths, storekeepers, and tinners (not "tinsmiths"). The residential Fitch House has been reconfigured into an 1830s-era children's museum where the watchwords are: "Please do touch." Grandparents can learn of the rigors of raising children in the 1830s, while kids can try on period clothing and play with toys like a Jacob's ladder, a chain of wooden slats connected by cloth.

A nondescript, five-story tenement occupies 97 Orchard Street on the City's Lower East Side. The interior is a museum with apartments reflecting the lives of German, Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrant families. Visitors can play the roles of newly arrived immigrants and are encouraged to ask 14-year-old immigrant Victoria Confino (a costumed interpreter) questions about life in the teeming neighborhood in 1916. They can also handle household objects and listen to music on an authentic wind-up Victrola.

 In this restored 19th-century Acadian French community, a woodworker crafts chairs while a fiddler and accordionist entertain outside a tavern. Visitors learn that wooden shoes were not just a Dutch tradition; Acadian farmers wore wooden footwear to work in muddy bogs. Kids can help make rope, handle raw wool, and sample Acadian fricot (chicken soup) and a variety of fish and potato-based recipes.

Shops and houses reconstructed on this 300-acre site reflect life in the 18th-century colonial Virginia capital. Youngsters can chat with the village wigmaker and learn why "flipping your wig" was a real concern in the 18th century, examine the fashionable hats offered at the milliner's, or take to the stage at the Theater for the Young. At Great Hopes Plantation, children learn about the life of slaves at that time.

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Colonial Williamsburg

In 2008, the home of U.S. President James Madison and his wife, Dolley, located a few miles from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, celebrated the completion of a $25 million restoration. The mansion tour is light on furnishings but heavy on history, appropriate for a president called "the father of the Constitution." Outside the house, though, are ample opportunities to experience life 1820s style. Your grandchildren can wander with you through the Landmark Forest or  soak in the beauty of the Annie duPoint garden, after you've all thoroughly explored the mansion of course.

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Montpelier

This village is a re-creation of the New Salem, near Springfield, where Abraham Lincoln lived in the 1830s. Don't look for his house; the Great Emancipator boarded with neighbors or slept in one of two general stores he co-owned. Today, you can see men splitting rails, women tending herb gardens, and oxen hauling wagons laden with logs. On the shelves in the Lincoln-Berry stores are the day's necessities, including coffee beans, cane sugar, fabric, and barrels.

Old Alabama Town in downtown Montgomery features typical old-fashioned sights of the South, like a cotton gin and cotton plants growing on the grounds. The circa 1892 Corner Grocery Store and the 1890s shotgun stack — with walls insulated by newspaper — offer a sense of urban Southern life the way it was lived more than a century ago. Kids can wander through the shops as they learn more about folklife.

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Old Alabama Town

Cowboys are the stars at this working 19th-century cattle ranch. Kids taking part in the junior-rancher program go on a scavenger hunt and may try lassoing the resident roping-calf, Woody. Coffee was a ranch mainstay; during chuck-wagon talks, kids can crank a coffee grinder and — with grown-ups' permission — sample a ranch-brewed cup. They also learn what Hollywood Westerns got wrong: In the reel world, many cowboys were often crusty old codgers, but in the real world, they were in their teens and twenties.

Mexican pueblo-style architecture reigns here. The rambling La Casa De Estudillo was San Diego's social and religious center during California's Mexican period (1830 to 1846). Other buildings include a 19th-century newspaper office and schoolhouse. Every Wednesday and Saturday, kids can soak up the culture through free activities as well as demonstrations--like blacksmithing!