Discovery Park, Union City, Tennessee

 

Discovery Park, Union City, TN

We spent the day at Discovery Park of America in Union City, Tennessee. This is an eclectic museum with a little bit of everything. Here are some of what we learned: At the train depot, we learned that trains used wireless telegraphs to send messages while they were moving. At Freedom Square, we learned about the early history of Tennessee: the creation of the Wilderness Road into the area and the role of Daniel Boone as a three-term congressman. We learned about the early inhabitants of this land with a huge display of stone tools and weapons. The military gallery gave some excellent history around the Civil War, World War I and WWII, including uniforms, arms, and the meals they served the soldiers. The science center featured changes in technology around communication, photography, data storage and energy storage. I found the display about early photography during the civil war especially interesting.  A lot of their exhibits are replicas, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t interesting. For example, they had lots of replicas of dinosaur skeletons, but a real mammoth skeleton from Russia – hard to believe how towering that mammoth was compared to a human.

Russian Mammoth