Each year the Moosehead Historical Society & Museums entertain and educate thousands of visitors from around the globe.
One visitor wrote of the Moosehead Historical Society’s museums, “I can’t even begin to explain to you how interesting and amazing these museums are. I can write for days about all the different exhibits and artifacts they have to offer. But to really get a good understanding of Moosehead’s history, you need to see it for yourself. They have so much to offer and you may not have known it, but everything you need to know about the area’s history is right at your fingertips. So add a tour of the Historical Society and Center for Moosehead History and Aviation Museum to your bucket list. I promise you won’t regret it.”
OUR MISSION: To collect, preserve, interpret, and exhibit the history of the greater Moosehead Lake region and its watershed, and to perpetuate the contributions of the people, past and present, who populate the area.
In pursuit of that mission, we’re home to and offer:
The Moosehead Outdoor Heritage & Lumbermen’s Museums
The Eveleth-Crafts-Sheridan Historical House
The Moosehead Cultural Heritage Center
The Moosehead Aviation Museum & B-52 Crash Permanent Exhibition
Moosehead’s Native American History
When you arrive our professional docent staff provides highly informative and entertaining guided tours at the Eveleth-Crafts-Sheridan Historical House, where you’ll also find the Outdoor Heritage and Lumbermen’s Museums. Self-guided tours take place at The Center for Moosehead History, home to the region’s Native-American/Wabanaki permanent exhibit, the Aviation Museum, and additional displays of our logging heritage, along with rotating new annual exhibits.
The Eveleth-Crafts-Sheridan House showcases the 1890s era mansion, the carriage house, and barn, bequeathed to the Moosehead Historical Society by Julia and Philip Crafts Sheridan to commemorate the economic, social, and cultural heritage of the region.
Julia Crafts Sheridan
Built in the early 1890s, the house and grounds were once part of the old Moosehead Inn property, also owned by the Crafts. The spectacular landscaping, particularly the sunken garden, became a showcase for residential horticulture in the early 20th century.
In 2019, we unveiled the new Moosehead Outdoor Heritage Museum. Moosehead’s Outdoor Heritage tells the stories and provides visitors with essential information about the life and times of our region’s working heritage and culture, and the spectacular natural resources, fish, animals, mountains, woods and waters we live with. It provides visitors with key notes about the private timberlands surrounding our communities and how that is different than the parks found in other destinations around the U.S.
We offer an historical overview of the region’s communities, the hotels and sporting camps, the lumbering industry, the steamboats on Moosehead Lake, and the people who live here in the region, past and present.
The Moosehead Historical Society & Museums was founded in 1962 by a group of local residents interested in preserving the unique history of the Moosehead Lake region. This interest has evolved over the years to encompass the gathering, conservation, and preservation of tens of thousands of photographs, paper ephemera, and three-dimensional artifacts, all housed in the buildings of the Moosehead Historical Museum and The Center for Moosehead History. These collections and displays provide insight into both the rugged and the fashionable lifestyles of the people who lived in, and visited, this remote region of Maine.
Not only are guided tours offered during the summer months, but also a wide variety of other services, including research, genealogy records, cemetery records, copies of paper ephemera, and scanning of photographs are available.
Travelers and Maine Archives & Museums alike have described our museums as New England’s finest in a small town. We actively endeavor to honor that distinction.