Showing posts with label visitor center. Show all posts
Showing posts with label visitor center. Show all posts

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Missouri: Arrow Rock Camping, Part 3: A Fuller History



Never Been Beat by Artist Joe Don Brave, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.


The Arrow Rock State Historic Site's Visitor Center is very, very attractive. It is a space easy to miss, abutting the village, but tucked behind trees and a boardwalk. There's an expansive parking lot accessible from the rural highway that serves both the village and the state park.


Joe Don Brave exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.


Given the diminutive size of Arrow Rock and its rural setting, it surprised and pleased me to see the permanent exhibit called Slavery, Racism, Violence: Justice and the Constitution -- the African-American experience in the Boone's Lick from Emancipation (1865) to the beginning of the Civil Rights Era.



History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.


For healing to occur in our society, it is imperative for us to look at our shared history, to gaze on it, to see it and to see the women, men, and children - our ancestors - who lived it.


History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

The exhibit impressed me with its straightforwardness in presenting facts and the effect of slavery and post-slavery times on residents, both black and white.


History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.


History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.


History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.



History exhibit, Arrow Rock Historic Site Visitor Center, Missouri. May 2018.

The visitor center featured a beautifully-lit room of art work by Joe Don Brave, an artist of Osage and Cherokee heritage.







Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Lafayette: Visitor Center


Lafayette Visitor Center, Lafayette, Louisiana

I popped  into the visitor center one weekend morning, thinking to get a map or two before pushing off to my next thing.

..... about an hour later, I left the center smiling after an enrichening conversation with the two docents inside. Native south Louisianans of cajun heritage, the two women enthusiastically shared engrossing information about the history, culture, and other tidbits relevant to the area.

Loved the outsiderish-art sign for the center.

There's a pleasant boardwalk trail on the property that guides visitors over the bayou. 

 
Lafayette Visitor Center, Lafayette, Louisiana


The only things I didn't love about the center is that it hides in plain sight on the Evangeline Thruway, which is always bristling with traffic, and regardless of which direction you approach the center from, you've got to make a fast left turn into the visitor center campus. The visitor center, in fact, resides on a wide "island" between the divided thruway.    

Once you know where the center is, it's not so much a problem, but I can't tell you how many times I drove right past it before I noticed there was a building there and later, that it was the visitor center. 

More prominent and earlier-on signage would be helpful to those unfamiliar with the area. Or just the directionally-impaired, like me.