Niles MI Museum

[Red Owl]

There is supposed to be a Fort St. Joseph Museum in Niles, MI. Anyone been there? How is it? Worth a trip? Thanks.

 

[Thagomizer]

Been about 12 years since I was there. The actual fort site is an ongoing archeological study with ground penetrating radar. There was an old museum nearby but all that I recall is that it had a taxidermy mount of a two headed goat. I'm sure there was some info on the fort also. Its location was on a portage from the St. Joseph river to the Kankakee.

 

[Jaeger]

There is supposed to be a Fort St. Joseph Museum in Niles, MI. Anyone been there? How is it? Worth a trip? Thanks.

I was there last summer, and, unless you are close by, I wouldn't make the trip....YET. They really had very few, if any, artifacts that had been excavated from the Fort St. Joseph site in the museum because they are still carefully excavating and categorizing the artifacts they are finding. Many of these artifacts are very tiny, ie glass beads about 1 or 2 mm in diameter. Remarkably, they can tell the age and origin of these beads after examination. Our group of reenactors had a special invitation to visit the excavation site and actually see the work being done. That was worth seeing! I think as the work progresses they will display more and more artifacts from the site. I would call before making a trip and press them for actual details of what they have in the museum. Overall, it's a nice museum.

 

[Red Owl]

Thanks- appreciate the help.