Landmark Park in Dothan, Alabama is an agricultural museum showcasing rural life in the 19th century. It features historic structures, reenactments, and educational demonstrations of period agricultural activities. The park also offers wildlife presentations, nature walks, and playgrounds. The Dothan Landmarks Foundation administers the park and seeks to preserve historic areas in and around the city. Many of the structures in the park are original, and volunteers donate thousands of hours of work each year.
Landmark Park, in Dothan, Alabama, is an agricultural museum that educates visitors about rural life in the 19th century. The Dothan Landmarks Foundation, established in 1949, is responsible for the administration of the park. Landmark Park boasts a church, drugstore, school, general store, and gazebo, all dating back to 1976. Landmark Park’s farm, nicknamed Wiregrass Farmstead after the Alabama region in which the park is located, features reenactments and demonstrations of all the various activities common to 19th-century farms.
Visitors to Landmark Park will typically learn the details of 19th-century farm life in rural Alabama. Volunteers and staff give educational demonstrations of common period agricultural activities such as quilting, butter churning, plowing with animals, spinning, and weaving. Agriculture and gardening conferences are held regularly at Landmark Park. Special events, like the Victorian Christmas or the Old Fashioned Ice Cream Social, are held every year. Other popular annual events at the park include the Wiregrass Heritage Festival and the Johnny Mack Brown Festival.
In addition to historic structures and educational demonstrations, Landmark Park offers visitors wildlife presentations and nature walks on both trails and a raised boardwalk. Children can enjoy the playground in the barnyard or during an educational presentation at the Landmark Park planetarium. The park is also home to an 1800s schoolhouse, church, and general store. Old-fashioned sodas can be purchased from the drugstore’s functional vintage soda fountain.
The Dothan Landmarks Foundation typically seeks to preserve all historic areas in and around the City of Dothan, Alabama. Landmark Park was established with land donations from the Dr. Sam West family and the McFatter family. The foundation purchased an additional parcel of land in 1993. Many of the structures found in the park have been donated. Because the park has only a few full-time staff, volunteer work is considered essential to its proper functioning, and volunteers donate thousands of hours of work to the park each year.
Many of the structures found in Landmark Park are original, although some were collected from elsewhere in the Wiregrass region of Alabama and moved to the park’s location. The region is named Wiregrass for the thin and tough native grass. The area was also once home to huge cypress trees, but settlers cut down most of them to build houses with their wood.
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