Historic Towns Revive Their Roles : Museums enliven the American past by re-creating rural communities.

The Pilgrim was busy cutting wood, but he was a friendly sort, and he stopped his work to answer my eager questions about the voyage to America in 1620 aboard the Mayflower.

“Was the ship crowded?” I asked. “Aye, it was,” came the answer from a husky young man dressed in gray homespun. “There were 50 men and 20 women and 2-and-30 children, all sizes and all ages.” At his side sat a young woman garbed in heavy skirts of hand-woven wool.

“And did everyone get along?” I continued. “We got along very well,” he replied. “We were too seasick, too busy casting off our fluids to quarrel.”

A Pilgrim? No, I haven’t taken leave of my senses; nor have I mastered the techniques of time travel. I have only been playacting, caught up enthusiastically in one of the most delightful ways to explore American history. In my recent travels around the country, in addition to the Pilgrim, I have talked to a Cherokee arrow maker and a California stagecoach robber (the robber sent me on my way when I convinced him I was carrying no gold). I was seeing life in America as it might have been decades or centuries ago.

Whatever your views on Christopher Columbus and his impact on the New World, this year’s 500th anniversary of his fateful voyage of discovery has focused the nation’s attention on its origins. An excellent way to reacquaint yourself with our national heritage is to visit the country’s rich treasure of museum villages--the special places that attempt to re-create everyday life as it was once lived in times past.

I met my Pilgrim at Plimoth Plantation, an authentically ragged replica of Plimoth Colony as historians believed it must have looked in 1627, just seven years after the Pilgrims stepped ashore at nearby Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. At the time, Plimoth had about 30 simple log homes clustered inside a stockade fence and some 170 residents. A few of them are portrayed by costumed actors, who tend the gardens, spin wool and cook over open hearths as the original Pilgrims might have done.

Several of these latter-day colonists make a point of strolling about the village’s dusty, rutted pathways chatting with 20th-Century visitors. No matter what you ask, the answer is phrased as if the year is 1627 and no later. Try to tease one of them with a question about airplanes or automobiles and you will get a blank stare in return. “I have no knowledge of that” is a customary reply.

I wandered the village’s pathways, poking my head into doorways and windows. Plimoth is so realistic, I began to feel almost like a snoop. But none of the residents seemed to mind. They beckoned me in. “Where do you sleep?” I asked one householder, since there was no bed and hardly any furniture in sight. “On mattresses,” I was told, “which are rolled up by day.” More substantial furnishings would arrive on later ships.

My encounter with the masked stagecoach bandit came unexpectedly, when he emerged from the piney woods on the outskirts of Columbia, a former Gold Rush boom town in the foothills of the California Sierra.

I was riding shotgun on the stagecoach, seated up top next to the driver, who was holding the reins on a four-horse team. Was the bandit Black Bart, the Gold Country’s notorious robber who held up 28 stagecoaches and who, when finally caught, turned out to be a San Francisco socialite? Perhaps so.

Like the legendary Bart, who reportedly never harmed a passenger or a driver, this gentlemanly bandit let our stage proceed when I and my fellow passengers truthfully pleaded a lack of gold. For this history-loving traveler taking his first-ever stagecoach ride, it was a thrill straight out of the Old West.

The huge old Concord coach, which really did carry mail through the mountains in the 1870s, rumbled back into town a few minutes later, dropping me off at the Wells Fargo office. I headed first thing for a cool schooner of beer at the local saloon. Surely the real Bart’s victims must have reacted similarly. Gold was discovered in the Columbia area in March of 1850.

At the height of the Gold Rush, the town’s population swelled to 15,000, then plummeted to almost nothing when the gold played out in the 1870s. Unlike many Gold Rush settlements, however, Columbia never succumbed to fire, vandalism or the elements. In 1945, it became a California state historic park. Ongoing restoration, aimed at maintaining its 19th-Century appearance, has made Columbia the best-preserved of the state’s Forty-Niner mining towns.

Scattered across the country are numerous other re-created, restored or rebuilt towns and villages such as Plimoth and Columbia. Among my favorites:

--Colonial Williamsburg. In old Williamsburg, you can imagine yourself, if only briefly, an active participant in the bustling life of a Southern Colonial capital on the eve of the Revolutionary War. I was captivated by the town on my first visit more than 25 years ago.

Williamsburg’s detractors will tell you that Colonial Williamsburg is an illusion, a spiffed-up version of the old capital that does not reflect the gritty harshness of colonial life. Maybe so, but I doubt many visitors are misled. You only have to sit for a while on one of the hard chairs at Josiah Chowning’s Tavern to realize that life in the colonies was not at all soft.

--Oconaluftee Indian Village. Tucked away on a shady hillside just outside Cherokee, N.C., near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is the Oconoluftee Indian Village, which re-creates Cherokee life more than 2 1/2 centuries ago. At the village entrance, I was met by a Cherokee guide who led me down a leafy path, past humble log dwellings where crafts workers practice ancient skills.

One hunter was devising a blowgun from river cane and another was shaping an arrowhead from flint. Nearby, a woodcarver fashioned a mask from yellow locust, and a weaver was busy making a colorful sash.

At the end of my tour, I gathered with other visitors in the seven-sided Council House, where we could ask questions of the guide and learn about life on the reservation today.

How does it differ from what the village represents? “We live in modern homes,” the guide said, “no different from yours.”

--Kamokila Hawaiian Folk Village. I had stopped to view Opaekaa Falls, a major tourist attraction on the east coast of the island of Kauai. The falls are photogenic, but I was more intrigued by the steep, one-lane road that dropped off from the cliff’s edge near the falls. A discreet sign informed me that below I would find the re-creation of an ancient Hawaiian village built beside the Wailua River, where a real village once stood.

Each of the huts is representative of an ancient Hawaiian structure--the chief’s assembly house, the men’s eating house, the sleeping house for women and children. All about were plants the islanders used for food, medicine and clothing. The broad leaves of the ti were especially important. Hawaiians wove them into leis, sewed them into raincoats and wrapped them around food for baking.

“They were the Hawaiians’ aluminum foil,” said my guide, and still are for many Hawaiians who cook traditional foods.

--Circus World Museum. Daily in the summer, an old-fashioned three-ring circus comes alive in Baraboo, Wis., the hometown of the famous Ringling brothers, founders of what became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The grounds where the Ringlings once wintered now shelter the world’s largest museum devoted to the circus.

The biggest exhibit is a full-fledged summertime circus, featuring famed trapeze artists, lion tamers, clowns, an elephant act and a gala parade with historic horse-drawn wagons.

Approaching the midway by way of a footbridge across the shady Baraboo River, I saw a circus scene from my childhood: In an open, grass-covered field rose the huge white show tent, trimmed in red and blue, with flags flying from every post top.

Suddenly, the calliope tootled a rollicking warning and Happy the Clown waved his arm toward the Big Top. I found myself caught up in the impromptu parade he led down the midway, sweeping up lagging spectators along the way. The morning’s gala show from the robust history of American circuses of the past was about to get under way.

GUIDEBOOK

Museum Villages

Most of the villages charge admission. Several offer escorted tours, which are part of the entrance fee.

Opening hours and programs may vary by the season.

--Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, Mass.: (508) 746-1622.

--Columbia State Historic Park, Columbia, Calif.: (209) 532-4301 and (209) 532-0150.

--Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Va.: (800) 447-8679.

--Oconaluftee Indian Village, Cherokee, N.C.: (704) 497-2111.

--Kamokila Hawaiian Folk Village, Kauai, Hawaii: (808) 822-1192.

--Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wis.: (608) 356-8341.