Frontier Culture Museum

Saturday, April 4th
Windy & Clear

ROAD TRIP. No better way to clear the mind than with a roadtrip. Saturday was spent driving up to the Frontier Culture Museum along I-81, in Staunton, VA. The museum is collection of frontier housing types which demonstrate living and working conditions from the 17th to 19th century. There is an English style cottage from the 1600s, some Irish dwellings from the 1700s, a german farmhouse and barns also from the 1700s. On the other side of the property one can find the American frontier houses from the late 1600s to the middle of the 1800s.

View Larger Map

The best part of the trip was seeing the construction of these buildings. The English, and German, and American homes were heavy timber structures. The Irish cottages were stone with some timber framing for the roof.

English cottage (c.1630)

American Farm House (c.1840)

Log Cabin (c.2009)
This is a side view of the log cabin. Interestingly enough the log cabin was brought over by Swedish settlers to Delaware. The employees of the FCM work to show the authenticity of the period. On the way out we watched as one guy split a log for fence rails. While he was quatering the log he asked me if I would like to give it a try.

After finding a crack in the wood he drove some iron wedges in with a small hammer. Then he used a mallet made from a tree stump and branch to start splitting. I got to finish off the last half of it. The picture does not capture the weight of that mallet or the sound. The log made this incredible ripping noise as it was being separated.

When it was all said and done we had had a great day and learned a lot about early frontier archicture and construction.

As a side project: I want to start a side project of trying to find a way to introduce a colonial period kitchen into a modern day kitchen. The kitchens in these buildings were about 10 feet wide and the floor of the room was the hearth. What would it be like to be in a modern day kitchen and able to cook on a stove top as well as bake bread in a brick oven? Something to think about at least.