Description

The Region of Three Oaks Museum re-opens for its 2025 season. Among new exhibits are--

• Medical care-- from pioneer home remedies to early doctors who road dirt roads on horseback to beloved country doctors of the 20th century, who carried huge bags full of medicine to make house calls. And one MD who brought free medical care to the people. Learn their stories!
• World War II-- The battlefield and the home front. See and hear the stories of The Greatest Generation, both in combat and on the home front. A 1940s kitchen has been added to this display.
• Mills: Pioneer technology-- Processing lumber and grinding grain were early attempts at harnessing water and steam power. See where early mills were located in Michiana and how they worked.
•  Three Oaks Community Fair-- In the 1910s, 20s, and 30s, the Three Oaks Fair was the biggest in Berrien County, featuring agricultural products and domestic arts and-- for a few years-- pink chickens!

The museum has an extensive exhibit on how the invention of "Featherbone" made Three Oaks a boomtown, and transformed dress-making across the globe. There's a display on how Featherbone inventor EK Warren helped bring the Dewey Cannon-- a war trophy of the Spanish-American War-- to Three Oaks.
Other returning exhibits focus on

• Cameras and photography-- You can see photos of the area from as early as 1870 and a giant box camera that took studio portraits in Three Oaks more than 100 years ago. Also on display-- one of Henry Ford's cameras, a "magic lantern" that displayed glass slides by kerosene lamplight. Visitors can see home movies shot in the area from as far back as the 1920s and see the projectors that showed them.
• Hats! Hats! Hats!-- Headgear through history-- From bonnets to derbies to top hats to cloches to baseball caps, you'll see the changing fashions in haberdashery through the decades. Try this one on for size!
• The Pokagon Band-- The local Potawatomi, who avoided removal to the west thanks to the negotiating savvy of their chief, Leopold Pokagon. There's a lot more to the Pokagon story than just a casino!
• Resorts/Camps-- At the dawn of the 20th century, automobiles and improved roads began drawing large numbers of city dwellers, eager to escape urban squalor and breathe fresh air. They found some pretty glamorous getaways in what became known as Harbor Country, and soon camps were springing up along the lakeshore to give children a respite from city life.
• Music-- See a uniform from the Three Oaks Town Band of the early 1900s, and check out the bizarre instruments created by the Marx-o-Chime colony of New Troy for several decades. You can even hear one of them being (painfully) played!
• AI photos-- See wonderful photographs of local scene, improved and colorized using an AI program. The vivid scenes of life in our area come to life with color!
• Agriculture-- Many folks came to Michigan for the soil, and our exhibit shows a lot of the tools they used to till the land and produce food-- first for themselves, and then for sale.
• Newspapers and Newsboys-- Remember the days of home delivery, either by a kid on a bike for a delivery driver placing a paper in a special home mailbox? We do too, and we've put the reminders of that bygone day on display.
• WHAT IS IT?-- See if you can identify artifacts, tools, and gizmos from the past. If you can't, there's a book on hand with explanations.

Helpful volunteer docents can help show you around, or you can browse the displays on your own. There is no entry fee, but this all-volunteer organization appreciates donations-- $3 is suggested.
The museum is open 12-5 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, May through October.