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I like to visit State Capitols and this is no exception, although unlike many others it’s no longer in use as originally intended as they constructed a new building in the 1960s. There was the usual security process to get in, but the guard was helpful and welcoming. It was a bit unclear at first where to go as there aren’t any printed guides, but nearly everything was open and visitors could just walk in, so that proved to be easier than I had expected.

The grand entrance area and the statue of George Washington. I had to take this photo at the end of my visit as I was about to take a photo at the beginning when the tour guide pushed past with her group. I was more amused than anything else at the situation as the group were mostly ignoring her and she seemed a bit oblivious to everything else around her. She also blocked the steps for other visitors later on after deciding she would have her group stand on the stairs to listen to her quite boring monologue. She wasn’t a patch on the lovely guide at the Virginia State Capitol.

Rolling back a little on the history of the building, the first section was opened in 1794, replacing the previous Capitol at Tryon’s Palace. The denizens of the state were very pleased with their building, extending it between 1820 and 1824. And then it burnt down in 1831, which it was unanimously agreed wasn’t entirely ideal.

A new building replaced it in 1840 and that’s the one that stands today, although it came at a huge cost of $530,000 which was a ridiculously large sum for the time.

Some of the ground floor rooms in the building are still used for State business and this is one of the Governor’s rooms.

The first floor (or second floor if you’re American) with the two former legislative chambers on either side.

I thought that this was suitably grand. I did debate doing something similar in my flat, but then thought it might be a bit ambitious.

This is the North Carolina House of Representatives, in use between 1840 and 1961, and this was originally known as the House of Commons. There’s some poignant history here, this is the room where in May 1861 delegates unanimously agreed to secede from the union.

The same room and it’s a shame that they couldn’t have kept sitting here for reasons of heritage, but I imagine they didn’t feel that there was enough space. To be fair, the tour guide managed to block half the building on her own, so it’s hard to picture the scene of hundreds of legislators and their staff.

The North Carolina Senate, also in use between 1840 and 1961. There were fifty members who sat in this Chamber, compared to 120 in the House of Representatives.

And the same room from a different angle.

I very much liked this, it’s the key to the 1831 building that burned down. It’s also the first exhibit that was obtained by the North Carolina Museum of History (that I’ve just written several posts about) although clearly they weren’t allowed to keep it.

The statue of Washington I mentioned earlier is a replacement because the original, designed by Antonio Canova,was destroyed in the fire. This is one of the bits that they salvaged. Not really enough to patch something together with.

And some bricks, as I like historic bricks, from the foundations of the first State House in the city.

One advantage in the building mostly coming out of use is that they’ve been able to open sections of it up, including the first library. It was used as the State Library between 1840 and 1888, but they had to start again as their other books were destroyed in the 1832 fire with the exception of a huge number that had been taken out by Archibald Murphey and were long overdue.

Viewing the Senate Room from above.

On the other side of the building is what was in 1840 the State Court, but that soon moved and this became a geology room which was used as something of a museum. Fortunately, the building wasn’t too badly damaged when the Confederates handed the Capitol over to the US army, although some items did go missing.

I didn’t have much time to really explore the grounds of the building, nor indeed visit the replacement Capitol, as I had a third museum to visit, a bar and then had my train to catch. But I very much enjoyed looking around this Capitol, it is more of a museum than a working building, but it felt quite authentic for that reason. And no prizes for guessing that my favourite room in the building was the library, I felt that was really quite peaceful and charming.

I’m fairly sure that the museum doesn’t call this their dinosaur conservatory, but in the absence of knowing how they define it, it doesn’t seem an inaccurate term. I don’t have much to comment on this other than it’s a striking use of the space available to the museum curators.

And this isn’t a T-Rex, it’s the real skull of an Acrocanthosaurus which once trampled and traipsed around what is now the United States.

And the skeleton of an Acrocanthosaurus, which is a dinosaur of which I hadn’t previously heard of.

I’ve already mentioned about the dinosaurs and the snakes at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences as they were the two elements that I thought were particularly memorable to me. It was though a large museum and not only was it free of charge to enter, there was plenty to see. One of the first exhibits that visitors to the museum see is the not insubstantial collection of skeletons that were hanging from the ceiling.

There are also sections showing the nature and landscapes of North Carolina.

Some of these also have water running through them, with a selection of fish and other marine life.

Various types of stone from North Carolina, presented for some reason in the shape of bowling balls.

Looking like a furniture showroom, this is a collection of different types of wood from the state.

This interested me more because it was created as a display in 1873 for the World’s Fair in Vienna, Austria rather than because it’s an intriguing piece of stone.

An alligator glued onto a piece of wood by Herbert Hutchinson Brimley, a long time director of the museum.

A stuffed snake. I’m always slightly sceptical that these are genuinely stuffed and dead, just in case one has cleverly crept into a cabinet to surprise members of the public. I have trust issues with snakes.

And a snake in a display jar. I’m a little happier when they’re pickled like this, I’m more readily able to believe that they are actually dead.

This plant is 220 million years old, which I think it’s fair to say is quite something. This is also almost exactly the same time as mammals started to evolve to put that into some form of context. Incidentally, snakes have been around for 125 million years, just as even more perspective to this.

And it makes this 65 million year old oyster shell seem quite young.

And a great white shark tooth from around 4 to 6 million years ago.

The skull of a T-Rex to scare the children with.

Visitors are positively encouraged to touch this 4.5 billion year old meteorite and since I didn’t want to miss out, I did. It felt like a lump of rock. It’s relevance to North Carolina is that in 1936 it fell into a farmer’s field in the state. The earth is 4.5 billion years old as well, but more disappointingly to me, the museum doesn’t give any information as to what the farmer thought about this rock appearing on his land.

There are more dinosaurs at this museum than you could shake quite a robust stick at.

This is Willo the Marvellous Lizard, perhaps the most complete skeleton found of a thescelosaur. This very skeleton has been the cause of much controversy, some claim it’s the only dinosaur uncovered in the world which still has a heart, although others claim that it most certainly isn’t any such thing. I don’t feel that I’m qualified to comment on the whole arrangement, but there’s more on the matter at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/willo-the-dinosaur-loses-heart-93712793/.

The underwater tunnel.

That was pretty much the end of my visit to the museum, with this walk-through butterfly arrangement currently closed to the public, although it was possible to peer in through the glass. The reviews of the museum are very high, indeed there few similar institutions in the world which are better reviewed, although a visitor called Christopher noted:

“Nothing was fun to look at kids didn’t enjoy”

His kids must have enormously high standards if they managed not to find anything interesting or “fun” in the museum, but each to their own. Of the few negative reviews that the museum had, most relate to their keeping of live animals (primarily snakes) although I was surprised no-one commented on how angry the snakes looked. That must have just been me thinking that I guess.

As this was my third museum of the morning I was at this point quite ready to get food and drink at a bar I was keen to visit, but it was a popular venues with families (the museum, not the bar) and I’d merrily recommend a visit for anyone who is unsure.

I had caught the free Raleigh bus the evening before to get to the hotel, so I considered myself enough of an expert to get back again into the downtown area of the city. Until I realised that the local authorities seem to have forgotten to have put pedestrian crossings to get across the bloody road. When I took this photo I had already traipsed, slightly grumpily, about half a mile down the road and the crossing wasn’t until the dip in the road ahead.

I had already missed my bus by the time I had got to the pedestrian crossing and I merrily pressed the button to stop the five lanes of traffic each way. And does a road need five lanes of traffic each way?

I had walked so far down that I had reached the next bus stop by the time I was able to cross the road.

This is the main road into Raleigh and this is a transportation failure in evidence, vast numbers of cars and this is after the rush hour. They’re trying to encourage public transport usage and full credit for free buses, but the pedestrian infrastructure is in such a bad state they’ll have one hell of a job to get people out of their cars. Also, I hadn’t realised this at the time, but Raleigh has more cars per person than anywhere in the United States. A failure of a policy, as the congestion means that the local economy is taking a financial and environmental hit.

And the delays mean that the bus, which is now visible in the photo, get caught up in the traffic. They have five lanes of traffic to play with, but none are designated as a bus lane to speed them up.

Boarded, ready for the twenty minute journey back into Raleigh and running only half an hour late. And this is why travelling can be tiring….

American museums often have a difficulty that they have nearly no exhibits to explain their history before the European settlers came over, namely because a lot of items owned by the native Americans were either transient or discarded and didn’t survive. The usage of the word “ancient” can in American terms can really be relatively recent, but this is one of the oldest exhibits that I’ve seen in an American museum that’s from the local area and isn’t a piece of stone.

It’s a thirty foot long canoe which was used 3,000 years ago by native Americans in Lake Phelps which is off towards the east of North Carolina. Generations of people used canoes in the area and in 1986 archaeologists discovered two dozen of them sunk into silt at the bottom of the lake, although they left some there for their own protection (of the canoes, not the archaeologists). Humans only reached this area around 15,000 years ago or so, meaning in terms of human history in the region, this canoe certainly is ancient. There’s more about this canoe at https://www.qaronline.org/blog/2020-06-01/artifact-month-lake-phelps-canoes.

At least I can’t be accused of clickbait with such a boring post name title.

But, it’s a little more interesting that I might have suggested by calling it an old jug. It’s actually a tankard which was found in what is now Martin County, off to the east of North Carolina. It’s notable as it’s the earliest surviving European style ceramic piece found in the Americas, dating from somewhere between 1680 and 1720. I think there’s a little bit of magic in that, something which has survived for so long and which had some considerable meaning to its original owner.

Incidentally, as some back history to all of this. Although the tankard itself isn’t connected to this, it isn’t that far (about 75 miles) from Roanoke Island, the mysterious lost colony that was founded by Sir Walter Raleigh and then disappeared from the record. And I mention this also because Raleigh is where the city name comes from, the locals named it after him.

Continuing on my theme of underselling the post with the title, these are Marginella shells which were used in trade by native Americans, with these ones dating from between 1711 and 1713. They can date this so accurately due to the Tuscarora War, when the Tuscarora people were thrown off their lands by European settlers and I think that these were used as grave goods. This falls into the category of museum exhibit which particularly interested me because of their heritage and how important they would have been to someone at the time. It’s also firmly in the middle of the period of when North Carolina was an English colony, which was between 1653 and 1776.