On my last afternoon in Dayton, Nelson said that she was not interested in going back to the Air Force Museum yet again, so we went looking for other attractions in the city, and settled on Carillon Park, Dayton's main local history museum/center. Now, for most places, that's about three rooms about the city's founding fathers and some natural disaster that struck in the town in the 19th century. And, well, there was that, but there was also a lot of stuff related to Dayton's fairly astonishing history of innovation. This is the town that gave us not only the airplane, but also the cash register, the cruise missile, leaded gasoline, the electric car starter, the pull tab for cans, and even freon, as well as lots of smaller stuff.
The main pavilion is focused on Dayton's engineering history, from its status as a manufacturing hub in the mid-19th century to the invention of the cash register by the company that became NCR (they have a really cool display of models sold all over the world) to more modern stuff. It was great, and made me wonder why there isn't a National Museum of Engineering, because that should totally be a thing and I would go there a lot. The exhibits were done well, and cover a lot of subjects in a way that felt accessible without being patronizing, a sadly common problem in science-type museums.
Outside, they have a whole bunch of smaller buildings covering various aspects of the town's history in a rather pretty park that it was slightly too hot to appreciate properly. Many are originals moved from elsewhere, although some are replicas, and they represent everything from the early settlers to an 1830s paper mill to the work of WAVES in the NCR factory assembling Enigma-decrypting machines in WWII. Particularly notable is the Wright Brothers museum, which contains replicas of their shop, the world's largest collection of their artifacts, and the 1905 Flyer III, whose restoration was overseen by Orville shortly before his death. There's also a building with a disassembled NCR payroll machine, which I really enjoyed, and an operational steam train that circles the grounds, which we didn't go on. My only real criticism is that they should have had like a big cutaway model of a mechanical cash register so you could see how it worked, and they didn't. We only had a couple hours, and saw less than a third of the stuff outside. It's not the best museum in town (the competitive bar there is insanely high) but it's definitely worth adding to a trip to the area.
Oh, and as for the park's name, it started around a Carillon, a traditional bell tower, and they apparently do concerts with it from time to time if that's your thing.
There's lots of other stuff around Dayton, much of it tied to the National Aviation Historic Trail, which I'm hoping to get a separate review of at some point soon. But outside of that, if you happen to be in the area, I also have a reader recommendation for Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve, which is "a big forest full of trails with a gorge near the edge of it. You can go down into the gorge if you want more exciting terrain, and there is a small cave down there somewhere. Also a beaver dam making a big lake." In any case, Dayton is a fun place, and I'd recommend going, not just for the Air Force Museum.
Recent Comments