Four days per week we
volunteer at Kings
Mountain National
Military Park
and the remaining days we rest, catch up, and explore the area. Most of our
recent posts covered explorations on our days off, but now we’ll get back to
sharing about the park focusing in this post on the Visitor Center.
THE VIDEO
Many National Park visitor
centers have videos, which provide an introduction and sometimes some
outstanding imagery of the park.
As Kings Mountain
is a historical park, its 26-minute video focuses on the history of the battle
and is quite informative. It’s a shorter version of an old History Channel
episode. As of the writing of this blog, you can watch the entire 44-minute
episode on YouTube here.
THE MUSEUM
Some visitors to Kings Mountain
don’t even realize there’s a museum as it’s kind of tucked in the back, but
it’s a nice little museum. Google reviews give it a 4.8 out of 5 stars!
Perhaps the most valued item
is their Ferguson
rifle.
 |
Major Patrick Ferguson,
commander of
the Loyalist force at the
Battle of Kings Mountain
|
Earlier in his career Major
Patrick Ferguson, the Loyalist commander at the Battle of Kings Mountain,
designed a breech-loading rifle, increasing firing speed and accuracy compared
to the more commonly used Brown Bess muzzle-loading smoothbore musket. Some of
the innovative Ferguson rifles were produced and
used in the Battle of Brandywine, but they were expensive and time consuming to
produce and were probably not used in the Battle
at Kings Mountain. Kings
Mountain National
Military Park
owns one of the six remaining Ferguson
rifles on public display. In 1969 the gun was stolen, but it was later
recovered purportedly when someone tried to sell it to the Smithsonian. Now the
gun lies behind a sophisticated alarm system.
One of the first displays in
the museum tells about the life of the overmountain men (the Patriots who came
from over the Blue Ridge mountains) – first
shining light on the front of a screen to show the outside of a cabin; then
lighting up behind the screen to show the inside.
The main room of the museum
recreates a forest reminiscent of the Kings Mountain
terrain of 1780 when large old growth trees dominated the hillside. Three men
could hide behind a tree.
Many museum exhibits are
built into the trees to isolate the audio. Each exhibit has displays, words on
a screen, and corresponding audio.
 |
old topographical map with
lights showing troop movement
|
The three exhibits use
sophisticated speakers that point directly to where one would stand to see each
display. When we arrived none of the speakers worked and the topographical map
worked only intermittently. Bill diagnosed the problems and solved some of the
issues, but two of the relatively new $2000 directional speakers need to be
sent back to the manufacturer or replaced with something more reliable. Barbara
should have taken a picture of Bill lying on the floor wearing his headlamp
trying to make sense of a rat’s nest of wires within the topographic display.
THE BOOKSTORE
The Visitor Center
also has a bookstore. It sells souvenirs but also a surprising amount of history
books. The woman who runs the store, Wilma, is a delight!
THE PASSPORT STAMP STATION
World travelers carry a
passport book and may get the book stamped when they enter a country. The
National Park Service copied the idea – they sell National Park “passport”
books to collect park stamps and they provide a stamp at each location. Some
visitors really get into this (like Barbara) and some even have hundreds of
stamps. It’s a fun and easy way to record one’s visit and it’s sometimes the
motivator for people to get to National Parks.
 |
Barbara’s National Park Passport
Stamp Book
|
With 417 National Park
units, there are lots of parks to explore and stamps to collect!
