Frontier Culture Museum: ‘Out of Many, One’

Virginia’s living history museum celebrates the contributions of America’s frontier culture.

A 19th-century reconstructed farm at the Frontier Culture Museum. By the 1820s, the different peoples who settled in the Shenandoah Valley had lived together for several generations. They were shaped by common experiences on the frontier: the Revolutionary War, the founding of the United States, and the market revolution. Bob Kirchman

Historian David McCullough once said that Virginia’s Frontier Culture Museum “is the only place of its kind in the world.” With its unique hands-on exploration of America’s beginnings, the living museum is a celebration of “E Pluribus Unum”—“Out of Many, One.” It traces the roots of the different peoples who traveled here. By reconstructing their former homes and way of life—from West African thatched huts to timber-framed European farmhouses—the museum showcases the unique contributions each culture made to America.

Situated in Staunton, Virginia, along the path of Shenandoah Valley’s Great Valley Wagon Road, the Frontier Culture Museum shows how different peoples traversed this path and contributed to the building of a new nation. Traveling from different countries across the ocean, some sought opportunity or fortune, some escaped famine and oppression, and others came as captives after they were sold into slavery. But all the immigrants brought something to this land—a permanent part of the American story.