Bottom Line: A very small museum that takes visitors back in time when beach goers arrived at…read moreChesapeake Beach via rail and gives insight to the resorts and attractions that used to be here. Imagine wearing a wool suit or Victorian dress in the middle of the summer in Washington DC when it was 90 degrees with 100% humidity and air conditioning was very rare. For the middle to upper middle class Washingtonians in the early 1900s a way to beat the heat was by taking a thirty mile train ride to the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay where the water was clear (yes, back then you could be in chest deep water and see your toes) and the breezes were cool. This museum pays tribute to the Chesapeake Beach Railroad that transported beach goers to the Chesapeake Beach resort town from the early 1900s to the 1930s. The museum building itself is the original train station of the Chesapeake Beach Railroad. Before there were cars there was railroads and this station was and is located just a few hundred yards from where the Chesapeake Bay meets the shore. The train station has been restored and consists of a few rooms and the outdoor platform. The museum has lots of old vintage pictures of the train and resort as well as various artifacts, some of which I've captured in my photos: I really enjoyed the roughly 15 minute video about the railway. The video covers the route of the railway including the various stops between DC and the beach. The video also talks about the various locomotives and train cars that served the line. I also enjoyed learning about the building of the track and brides and opposition from the behemoth Pennsylvania Railroad.

The Museum is housed at The Chesapeake Resort and Spa and great for children and adults. The images…read moreand information here is well worth taking a look

This local history museum is a hidden treasure. If you are planning a day or a weekend in the Twin…read moreBeaches area (Chesapeake Beach and North Beach, MD), I highly recommend a stop here. The first floor contains exhibits and artifacts about the geology and formation of the Chesapeake Bay and the fossil beds along the Calvert shores. There are drawers of fossils to fascinate the kids. The first floor also contains fascinating exhibits and artifacts from the heyday of this area, when the boardwalk was a mile long, and the attractions included an amusement park, dance halls, salt water pools, and other forms of amusements. They have original artifacts like a Bingo pinball machine. The second floor has exhibits about the War of 1812, Scouting and Camp Roosevelt, and a fascinating "cottage exhibit" with antiques and period items from local shore cottages. So if you are planning a visit, plan to spend an hour here to get oriented to the time when droves of people headed to these little shore towns to enjoy the beach.

This museum is truly a gem! Two floors of exhibits, staff is super-nice, all artifacts well…read moredocumented, and if you're lucky...you'll get a guided tour!

What a great little spot to check out. I was expecting this to be more of an art gallery than a…read morehistory museum. An interesting and different history of the local families who founded Copperville and Unionville just north of here. Great printing making exhibit with more religious based undertones mixed with African themes. There are some cool biblical stories mixed with folklore you wouldn't find elsewhere. They have the place pretty well organized and have completed prints as well as the different etchings to each work. The walls are covered in prints. They have books showing other original works as well. Though still in it's infancy, there is a lot of potential for the museum. Even though the building is fairly small, they have managed to pack the place full of art and are able to tell some great history of the families to go along with the works. One of the guys who helps with the place traces his ancestors back to these founding families. It's a place unlike what I've ever been to before. The museum is on the side street and there are a few parking places right in front of the building. There is also an underground railroad marker out front showing where the trail passes by.

This small museum was informative about local artist Ruth Starr Rose who was inspired by Negro…read morespirituals to make an array of art pieces from oils to pencil drawings. The staff was extremely knowledgable.

This is a real hidden gem. We visited with a group from our church, on a day they were doing needed…read morerepairs. Even so, museum staff kindly opened their doors to us, provided seats, and talked to us, very passionately, about Harriet Tubman and the legacy of the Underground Railroad. They are a wealth of knowledge. There are many beautiful murals throughout the space telling different parts of Harriet's legacy. Truly, don't miss it!

As much as it pains me to post a negative review (something I hardly ever do), I feel it would be…read moredisingenuous to do anything else. Not a good experience today at all. We were vacationing in Ocean City and needed a break from the beach and traditional touristy activities. As great admirers of Harriet Tubman, my wife and I decided to visit the museum and were particularly excited to have a guided walking tour. I booked our tour online and we drove an hour and a half to Cambridge. As we pulled into the parking lot, the tour guide called and left a message saying she wasn't available. Apparently she had told the museum not to schedule tours for today, but their system had done so anyway. We went into the museum, trying to make the best of a frustrating situation. It was very limited and amateurish. That is not being critical, as it appears to be seriously underfunded and operated by volunteers. Just stating what we saw for others to be aware. it was basically a collection of printed materials with little, if any, original items unique to Harriet Tubman's lifetime. The museum director never greeted us. There were four or five people sitting and watching a PBS documentary. A couple of other groups walked in, looked around and then left. None of them were greeted either. Finally, I went up to the register and he asked if he could help me. I explained what had happened, and he chuckled, saying "Yeah, this happens sometimes. I guess the person who set up the system needs to fix that." He gave me $40 out of the cash register and that was it. No apologies or anything. After we left the museum, I texted the tour guide that he'd refunded our money only to find out that she had also done so online. We had to go back to the museum to give the $40 back. Total waste of a day of vacation. Again, I hate to be the grumpy guy leaving a bad review, but hopefully this will be helpful to someone somehow.

I wish we'd had enough time and energy for a full day visit, so we could properly convey all that…read morethe Arboretum has to offer, but we were limited to a half day following the "Flight to Freedom" walk while we followed both Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass' historical paths, a joint program of the arboretum and local historians to try to sort of simulate the outdoor challenges of escaping enslaved persons. As such, and in early spring, our appreciation was limited to one trail and the amenities around the visitor center, but our appreciation and admiration for the Adkins for even this bare introduction to the extensive grounds is nevertheless deep just from the one visit and left us eager to return on another day to explore the rest of the trails. The front desk person was lovely and kind, and oriented us after we explained why we were there. (The admission price here is tiny; I recommend donating a little extra on top of it. It's a great bargain either way.) They have these old-school mini-walkmen-style audio guides that were helpful but which badly need to be updated to the 3rd decade of the 21st century. They're hard to navigate and harder to hear. Having a borrowed audio guide feels like something from the 1950s; why not just make it available on cell phone, with the text available online or via an app? That was the one clumsy part of the Flight to Freedom path-- only one person at a time could listen to the very low volume on the headphones. While we speculate perhaps they thought this approach would preserve the quiet for other visitors, perhaps a simple imprecation to keep volume low on cell phones would suffice...? I can't think of a good reason not to make the jump to current museum practice. (That plus it's not very disability-friendly if you're hearing impaired or have fine motor problems.) When we could hear it, the audio guide was excellent, including the "bonus" tracks of first person escapee narratives. The content only needs a better delivery mechanism. The arboretum itself was quite alive -- we saw a heron in the woods, ID'd about 20 different species of birds in total either by sight or with Merlin, ran across a blooming hawthorne that was simply riotous with honeybees merrily sucking nectar out, and enjoyed the early blooms. It was a fun time, where one can see through the underbrush but also see the buds and early leaves and many blossoms out. There were also some programs for young children going on, and it's very gratifying to see the place alive with visitors. The little gift shop is fun, and while there's no café (one can understand why) it would be very tempting to bring a picnic, which I suspect (but do not know) is frowned upon. The inviting water feature out front with the signature chairs was a nice place to stop and rest, while we listened to the frogs croaking and somehow avoided early season insect pests.

Great place to visit, it has a visitor center, kids activities, nice trails gardens and much more!…read moreVisit any season of the year!! A truly beautiful place

I just visited the U.S. Naval Academy Museum for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and I was…read morereally impressed. The museum is located in Preble Hall on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy, so you'll need to check in/go through security at the visitor entrance (they check ID and run your bags through a metal detector), but it was very fast. Then it's just a quick walk over to Preble Hall. When we entered, we welcomed to the museum by two docents, who briefly explained what could be found in the museum, including their favorite parts of the collection (which was perfect, because we had less than hour in the museum before they closed). The museum is two floors. The first floor has exhibits on the development of the Navy and the history of the Naval Academy. The second floor houses an incredible collection of models of warships from the 17th-19th centuries (one of the largest collections of ship models). I wasn't sure this would be that interesting to me, but the docents had really highlighted this part of the collection during their introduction. I'm so glad we trusted them, because it was fascinating. One part of this collection really blew me away - the bone model display. It might sound morbid, but these models were carved from the bones of beef rations given to French prisoners of war during their incarceration in England (Anglo-French wars of 1756-1815). I had no idea about any of this history (does anyone?!), and it was really interesting. But the first floor also had amazing artifacts, and I learned a lot. Overall, this museum (also free, by the way) was pretty great. Even if you're not typically interested in naval history, this museum is special. It's well-curated and interesting. And those docents were wonderful! I'm sure I'll be back to take in what I didn't have time to on my first visit!

Free museum! Tip,…read moreyou can't drive your car to entrance as a visitor. Must park in town and walk over. Volunteers at desk are available to give you tips about the exhibits. Clean bathrooms are available. The ship exhibits are cool!

Amazing museum. It is quite affordable and has so much history to learn about the history of…read moreAnnapolis such as how it was a temporary US Capital as well as all the diverse groups here such as African Americans, Women, and Jewish Americans. Came here in 4th of July along with other historic sites as part of a Historic Annapolis package and they had a small guitar exhibit too.

I was expecting a Maryland State museum in Annapolis, but instead I found this museum of historic…read moreAnnapolis. When I arrived the staff at the front desk was very welcoming and friendly. I ended up chatting with them for a while before I left. This is a fairly new museum, so I don't know why Yelp has it attached to some reviews from 2018 that must reference a different museum. The visit starts off with an introductory video. From there you can head up the stairs to see 2 more floors of exhibits. It's a small building so it's not a lot of space. But the space is filled with lots of cool artifacts and information chronicling the history of Annapolis. I didn't even know it was once the capital of the country. I like that the museum doesn't gloss over the part slavery played in Maryland history. Definitely worth a visit if you are in Annapolis.

I'm writing to say the museum is now at 103 Hayward Street. There is an active boatworks where…read morepeople can learn how to build and repair boats. The Nathan skipjack is often docked here as well as the Dudley, although they both have their own websites. There are some special events here, including a Boatyard Bash and an annual skipjack race on the Choptank. The museum itself tells about the master boatbuilder Jim Richardson who built the skipjack Nathan and worked on countless boats in his lifetime. Models of skipjacks are displayed and boatbuilder tools, as well as a history of racing boats in Cambridge, Maryland. They also have a library and book store.

Excellent museum in downtown Cambridge, within walking distance of the marina. It's larger than it…read moreappears from outside and has many rooms to explore. The impressive collection details shipbuilding from Cambridge's past with replicas, antique tools, ship models and more. There is no admission fee but they do accept donations. Would highly recommend this museum to anyone visiting Cambridge to better understand the historical and current importance of the water to this charming town.