Golden Pond Visitor Center

After driving through the Elk and Bison Prairie we drove to the nearby Golden Pond Visitor Center.  We first ate lunch outside at a picnic table and then headed inside to look through the exhibits.

The Golden Pond Visitor Center serves as our information hub at Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. Visitors will find brochures, recreation  maps, trail maps, state maps, clean restrooms, soda machines, a gift shop, children’s play area, pavilion, trail heads, recycling center, and more. Regional brochures describe attractions and historic sites in the area.

An exhibit room of historic photographs and interpretive messages explains the rich heritage of the land and the people who lived “between the rivers.” The exhibit also delves into the buildings of the dams on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers with the eventual forming of Land Between The Lakes.
-from Land Between the Lakes website

Just inside the entrance you'll see quite a few pamphlets and the entrance into the exhibit area.

The visitor center also has a Planetarium which I'd like to visit on a future trip.

The exhibits tell the cultural and geographic history of the region, starting back when it was just an area between two rivers and continuing through the area in which the lakes were created by damming.

The area was called between the rivers when it was first explored and settled by Americans.

I always enjoy looking at maps in a museum, especially old maps that don't quite match the modern maps we use today.

Quite a bit of work was done to the land between farming, trade, and industry (like the smelting furnace we'd seen earlier).

Sadly the history wasn't entirely happy with a history of bad treaties present.

I'm a sucker for taxidermy displays.  I think they add quite a bit to a museum display.

The girls sat mostly still with my parents to watch the video at the end of the exhibits.

The gift shop wasn't large but had some interesting items in it.

I thought this t-shirt was a fun design.

As we were leaving we saw this beautiful tree next to the visitor center.

The visitor center wasn't large, but it was well worth visiting if you were in the area.  You can find a few more pictures that I didn't post above in this album.

~Matt