24 Destination Rainier a supplement to the Nisqually Valley News
Pioneer Farm gives hands-on experience Most museums offer indoor viewings of historical pieces. At Pioneer Farm in Eatonville, visitors can enjoy a living museum dating back to the late 19th century. Journey back to the 1880s via a hands-on tour through a pioneer homestead. Then, cross the street and move season to season through the forest at the Ohop Indian Village. Educator Meryl Pruitt and her family created the living history museum near Eatonville in 1975. Since then, hundreds of thousands of visitors have enjoyed learning the history, culture and environment of pioneers and Native Americans.
The family-oriented museum is open to all. The homestead tour includes exploring two cabins, where people can learn about the families who built and lived in the buildings in the 1880s. Pioneer Farm, a popular field trip destination for schools throughout Washington, teaches visitors about what happened in schoolhouses back then. People learn about schoolhouse etiquette where girls sit on one side and boys sit on the other, and how girls played in the front yard and boys played in the back. Tour guides explain that any child caught disobeying the rules would receive lashings.
2010 File Photo
Children get a chance to experience an assortment of hands-on activities at Pioneer Farm.
Visitors learn that children used to receive lashings for many things such as misbehaving, talking out of turn or miss-
ing a math problem. If a student got lashed at See FARM, page 25