Fort Smith Museum of History

The staff and volunteers at the Fort Smith Museum of History were very accommodating and helpful. After our scouts finished a service project, they elected to take a short hike to the museum. Each one said they had the best time. The visit to the museum will not be complete without a trolley ride through downtown. Shout out to Robert the trolley conductor. Yelp got the web site wrong. Please correct it to:https://www.fortsmithmuseum.org/

Since I'm not from this area, I wouldn't know what to expect. Obviously, the early U.S. Army had a fort here. They say something about defending against an Indian uprising. I could write for days about such a thing, but that takes away from the museum.The museum has a few exhibits for free in the lobby. If you want to see the rest of the first, and the second floor, it's $5.00 for adults, which isn't bad, considering the amount of information and the orderly way in which it's presented. Of course, flash photography is not wanted, as it can cause older items to deteriorate more quickly.They had early maps of the area, including a French map of the Native American Indians, which was quite informative. A handy guide to French would have made it accessible to everyone.They presented many items from the 1800s and early 1900s throughout the building, including vehicles, tools, and clothing. There were newspaper articles explaining events. I was surprised to see the creative use of typography, given the difficulty of manually assembling a page of metallic type. Along with this, they showed a couple of printing presses.On the second floor, they went into later years, up through the 1960s, and touched on subjects more likely to still be on the minds of older generations in the area.I suspect that school kids will go to the museum no matter what, but those who don't know about the history of the area should take the trip. Besides, feeding a museum in order to help preserve your history isn't a bad thing at all.

Very nicely done! We had a flight cancellation on a very rainy Saturday which led us to the museum. Glad we went. The staff was very nice and the displays were great. Keep up the good work! Thank you!