Plimoth Plantation

 museum, park

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137 Warren Avenue
Plymouth, MA 02360
(508) 746-1622
www.plimoth.org/

Plimoth Plantation is a living history museum recreating the 1627 British colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

First-person interpreters portraying actual colonists talk about the ocean voyage across the Atlantic, why they left England and Holland, what they're making for dinner, how the current building project is going, and even why cotton is a cheap, useless fiber.

The Wampanoag village near the settlement has modern-day interpreters who talk about settler-native interaction, daily life in the era, and how their dealings with the colonists changed the tribe.

The entire operation continues to evolve as archaeological and research discoveries continue to shed new light on life in the early colony. One physical manifestation has been the presentation of the colony's defenses.

Once thought to have been focused mostly on protection from the natives, new research indicates that the colonists (wisely, it turns out) feared a seaborne attack from the Spanish as much as any native uprising. As originally built, the reconstructed fort/meetinghouse looked like a church with a hidden gun deck on top. It has been heaviliy modified over the years by the addition of the roof and flanking artillery bastions, which have transformed the hill into a formindable strongpoint in the face of an attack.