From Sea to Shining Sea in Your Town!

The NOAA/SITES poster set, From Sea to Shining Sea: 200 Years of Charting America's Coasts opened at 200 locations across the country in June 2007 and reports from the field have been pouring in!

Alongside the posters, the Pensacola Historical Society in Pensacola, FL, presented overviews of local maritime history, Pensacola hurricanes (ranging from the storm of 1906 to Hurricane Ivan in 2004), and historic artifacts from the collection including a sextant, a telescope, binoculars, a coastal chart from the 1940s, and a NOAA Hurricane warning flag.

In Kirtland, OH, the Lakeland Community College Library worked with the Lake County Historical Society to augment the posters with an exhibit about their local waterways, entitled When Water Was THE Way. The display features maps and pictures of local waterways and ports while highlighting their economic and recreational value.

The exhibition was part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Museum of Science History in Corpus Christi, TX. The museum supplemented the poster exhibit with two table top cases of surveying instruments from their collection and 1860s maps of the Texas coast made by Felix Blucher, an early surveyor in south Texas. Simultaneously, the museum presented a children's exhibit that included an interactive lighthouse and shrimp boat. On the day of their celebration, their visitor count was 2,123 compared with 382 visitors that same Saturday in 2006.

The Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur, TX, worked with the local Seafarers Center and Women's Maritime Club to promote the exhibit, which was augmented with surveying instruments, charts, and maps.

Thanks for the feedback, folks!

-Jennifer Bine, SITES Project Director

Comments

[Ann]

To find out if this exhibition is going to be in your neck of the woods, visit http://www.sites.si.edu/host/fromseatoshiningsea_participants.htm

[RD]

How can I find out if Sea to Shining Sea is near me?

[Heather]

This seems like a really great exhibition. Does SITES think they will do another one like it?