CONTINUING EXHIBITS
History Lab Learning Center
Now open on the 5th floor of the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, the History Lab learning center engages visitors with interactive exhibits featuring such historical concepts as time, Place, Viewpoint, Exploration, and Precedent. In the learning center, visitors of all ages are encouraged to use the Tools of the History Trade (artifacts, ephemera, books & periodicals, people, maps, and images) to think like detectives in search of evidence. Because, as History Lab virtual curator Inspecta Detecta points out, "every time we turn around, we're faced with a History Mystery that needs to be solved." You just need to know how. And discovering how to "do history" is what the History Lab is all about.
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Great Hall of Washington History
Imagine walking through Washington's history and encountering intriguing sights, sounds, people, places and ways of life. Meet William Clark, ride in a covered wagon, and explore a coal mine. Take a video trip down the Columbia in the three-screen Columbia River Theater. Use an interactive computer to learn Native languages. Drop in on Mac and Leon as they discuss the Depression while avoiding the rain in a Seattle Hooverville shack. Ask Jasper a question in Walla Walla's Schwabacher General Store. Walk through a traditional Southern Coast Salish plank house and listen in on a conversation with a basket maker and her granddaughter. Colorful, interactive exhibits and walk-through dioramas depict the natural setting, the lifestyle and culture of the first inhabitants, exploration and settlement of the region, and the important people and milestone events that have shaped our state.
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Model Railroad
We are still working on the railroad! Don your conductors cap and climb aboard the History Museum's own model railroad. Watch history being made as the Puget Sound Model Railroad Engineers club continues construction on the 1,800 square foot permanent layout depicting the rail lines from Tacoma's Point Defiance Park to the Stampede Pass tunnel in the Cascades. Steam and diesel engines travel past the ASARCO tunnel and tower, the Sperry Flour Mill & Sperry Ocean Terminal, the Seybold-Miller shake mill, and of course, Tacoma's own Union Station as it appeared in the 1950s during the golden age of railroads.
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Transportation Time
Ezra Meeker's beloved oxen, Dave and Dandy, are back on display in the History Lab, an interactive learning experience. Although the original is no longer on display, Meeker's wagon traveled the nation at the turn of the century, promoting the tales and trials of the Oregon Trail trek to the West.
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