Conner Prairie Totally Explained

Everything about Conner Prairie totally explained

Conner Prairie is a living history museum in Fishers, Indiana, USA, that preserves the historic William Conner home and recreates part of life in Indiana in the 19th century on the White River.

History and Development

Conner Prairie was begun when pharmaceutical executive Eli Lilly donated the Conner home and surrounding farm to the Quaker liberal arts school, Earlham College in the early 1960s. Earlham ran Conner Prairie as a wholly-owned subsidiary and it grew from a local tourist attraction and educational outreach for the College into the highly regarded institution it's today. As Conner Prairie gained increasing strength and independence, tension developed with Earlham. After a lengthy and contentious legal struggle with Earlham, the museum became completely independent as a result of a plan brokered by Indiana's attorney general. Conner Prairie now has its own board of directors and maintains its own finances and endowment fund.

Layout and concept

The museum grounds are divided into several sections, where different eras in history are recreated to create a kind of living timeline. Staff in period costumes demonstrate the way early inhabitants in the area lived. They explain their lifestyles in character while performing chores such as cooking, chopping wood, making pottery, and tending to animals. Patrons are often invited to join in the activities.
The museum's main building, called the Museum Center, contains the entrance lobby, ticket sales counter, restaurant, banquet hall, and gift shop. The gift shop sells pottery made by the museum's costumed staff as well as more conventional souvenirs.
Conner Prairie serves as the summer home of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. The Friday/Saturday Symphony on the Prairie concert series, sponsored by Marsh Supermarkets, attracts some 90,000+ concert goers each year, a substantial percentage of Conner Prairie's annual visitor count.

Attractions

Conner Prairie features several permanent attractions and numerous semi-regular events, including "Mystery on the Prairie" murder mystery evenings, the Headless Horseman ride in the autumn, candlelight tours, and country fair. It also hosts Civil War re-enactments, and Christmas holiday events and dinners.

Conner house

The genuine Conner brick house and barn are preserved as a museum. Visitors can hear about how early Hoosiers cooked, spun and dyed thread and yarn, and cared for their animals and crops.

1886 Liberty Corner

Liberty Corner recreates a rural community in 1886, with a schoolhouse, Quaker meeting house, authentic covered bridge, and farm (Victorian home and three-bay bank barn). Visitors might even catch a vintage base ball game.

1836 Prairietown

Prairietown recreates a pioneer community in 1836, with a blacksmith shop, pottery shop, inn, doctor's office, schoolhouse, and several residences. Visitors arriving early in the day might help with morning chores.

Lenape Camp

Lenape Camp recreates bark and cattail mat wigwams and a fur trade camp with a log cabin. Visitors can learn how the Lenape (Delaware Indians) lived in Indiana and hunted and trapped animals to trade with white fur traders.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Conner Prairie'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://conner_prairie.totallyexplained.com">Conner Prairie Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.