Conner Prairie, Indiana's Living History Museum
Near Indianapolis, Indiana
Along the West Fork of the White River in Hamilton County sits Conner Prairie, one of the most visited outdoor history museums in the United States. The land traces to William Conner, a fur trader and interpreter who built a two-story Federal-style brick house here in eighteen twenty-three, serving the Delaware people he had lived among for years. In nineteen thirty-four, pharmaceutical executive Eli Lilly purchased the property and restored Conner's house, donating it to Earlham College in nineteen sixty-three.
What grew from that gift is a sprawling living history campus where costumed interpreters re-create Indiana frontier life across multiple time periods. In the mid two thousands the museum became fully independent. A Smithsonian affiliate, Conner Prairie connects hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to the lives of people who shaped the early Midwest.
