(upbeat music) - [Commentator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Narrator] Coming up, travel to three distinctive tourist destinations.

Destinations that might just leave you searching for knowledge, finding peace in nature, or even seeking answers in the stars.

At the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, explore the wonders of our world from dinosaurs, ecosystems, live animals, and more.

- [Visitor] One of the coolest thing is the whale skeletons that hang from the ceiling.

- [Narrator] Outside Columbia, South Carolina, go for a hike or paddle with a visit to Coning National Park.

- Once you get out here in nature, it's absolutely spectacular.

- [Narrator] Want something more spectacular?

Head to a public viewing night at the Three College Observatory for a destination that figuratively speaking is out of this world.

- Little kids come here and some of them may become future scientists.

- [Narrator] So come along as we hit the road on our natural history and science road trip, exploring these three special destinations to learn about how they got started and see how they strive to educate visitors.

All that and more on this episode of "Trail of History".

(upbeat music) Whether it's a weekend road trip, a day off from school, or even a family vacation, it's often hard to decide where to visit.

Well, if you enjoy history, science, and nature, maybe choose destinations that will immerse you in the wonder of natural history and science.

Raleigh, North Carolina, a thriving metropolitan city and the state's capitol, the perfect getaway destination for Paul and Shirley Smith from Union County.

- Tonight we're going to the hockey game.

- [Narrator] In town to celebrate their anniversary, but with a little time to kill.

- Why not go to a museum?

- [Narrator] The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, to be more specific.

Over 1 million visitors just like the Smiths explore the museum each and every year.

- This is very, very beautiful place.

I was kinda surprised because it's free and you know, you don't know what to expect when somebody tells you something's free.

- [Narrator] That's right, free admission.

- All you gotta do is get to downtown Raleigh.

And when you walk in the doors, almost everything that we have is free to do, the educational programs, the exhibits.

Come take advantage of all that we've got.

- [Narrator] Free to explore multiple floors of interactive exhibits, live animals, and even peek in on scientists in action.

It's all part of the museum's mission.

- [Chris] The mission of the museum is to illuminate the natural world and inspire its conservation.

- [Narrator] Deon Temne hopes a trip to the museum will inspire his son, Ethan.

- So we are homeschoolers.

So I am, we are doing science day today, so I thought, hey, why don't we come down to Raleigh and go to the Museum of Natural Science?

- [Narrator] While technically a school day for Ethan, for dad, it's quality father, son time.

- That's unreplaceable.

To spend time or you know, just pour into your children is the best you could...

I mean, it's the greatest gift you can give them.

- [Narrator] When Emily Wells's daughters, Abby and Avery had the day off from school, she chose to bring 'em to the museum for a day out.

- We came to see if there was any new exhibits.

- [Narrator] The trio have their must see spots.

- We love to check out the mountain area.

This is one of our favorites, the hell bender.

And the different salamander exhibits are really cool.

So they really like those.

They really like all of the interactive exhibits with the buttons that you can push with sounds and flipping different things over.

They love the fossil sections downstairs.

- [Narrator] For mom though, she says, exposing her daughters to the world through a day at the museum is important.

- Learning about the natural world in North Carolina and the different parts is very important for them to understand the history of North Carolina, the natural environment, and the different species that we may see in different areas.

- [Narrator] What you might not know about the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science is how it all got started more than 140 years ago.

- The state had this collection of timber products, agricultural products, and mining products, and we would load 'em up and we would take 'em to like fairs and expositions around the country, show them off and try to convince people to come do business in North Carolina.

After the Civil War, this was important because we're in that reconstruction period and the state is trying to rebuild its economy.

But by the late 1870s, the state decided that this collection was too special and important to just be showing off to business people.

We should actually make it a museum and make it open to the public.

- [Narrator] So in 1879... - The General Assembly actually passed a very short bill that said, turn the geology collection, which is what they called it, into a museum.

- [Narrator] They hired Herbert Brimley to turn the once traveling collection into a museum.

- [Chris] Visitors to the museum today can actually see some of the things that were on exhibit way back in the late 1800s.

- [Narrator] A lot has changed since the museum's original inception in a downtown hotel building.

- When visitors walk into the front doors of the museum, they're immediately greeted by all of the wonders of North Carolina's natural beauty.

They have the opportunity to see our incredible exhibits.

People even have the opportunity to pick up and hold some of the specimens that are part of our collection.

- [Narrator] But they don't stop there.

- There's also lots of opportunities that we provide for people to engage with scientists themselves, like the people who are actually learning about and creating knowledge about the natural world.

- [Narrator] One of those scientists you might meet is Dr. Lindsay Zanno.

- [Dr. Zanno] I'm the head of paleontology here at the museum.

- [Narrator] That's right, she gets to work with dinosaurs and fossils.

- We have an active research lab.

We're focused on discovering and excavating dinosaur fossils from around the world.

We bring them back to the space where they're prepared and cleaned up for research in front of the public.

- [Narrator] Massive windows allow visitors to watch the paleontology team hard at work.

- It's an opportunity to see science in action.

- Zanno and her team studied dinosaurs that died millions of years ago, but she says the science has modern day importance.

- One of the things we're really focused on is a period of earth's history that mimics a lot of the challenges we face today on the planet.

So this is a time period back in the Cretaceous when there was a lot of global warming, there was sea level rise, there was habitat loss, and the dinosaurs lived through that interval.

So we can understand how that climate change happened and we can understand how it affected animals like dinosaurs and we can better understand what to expect in our own future.

- [Narrator] In the spring of 2024, the museum upped the level of interaction with a brand new experience called Dueling Dinosaurs.

- We wanted to build something where people could not only look at what was happening through glass, but people could actually physically walk into a working paleontology lab and talk to the scientists as they were working, see the specimens without glass, and learn about a real science project in action as it's happening.

(energetic instrumental music) - Today, our research collection has more than 4 million specimens.

It's massive.

- [Narrator] The collection is so large, parts of it are housed at places like the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Prairie Ridge Ecostation, where you won't find a little house, but you will find this nondescript building housing something a bit fishy.

- So this is one of our oldest specimens, fox fish, that is found dried up on a beach somewhere.

I am a researcher and I study fish biodiversity.

About 5,000 species of fish are in here.

There's about 1.4 million specimens, and we use them to conduct research and we basically act like a research library.

- [Narrator] Through an online database, researchers from around the world can access the collection.

- And all that data, you know, it has not just like what fish it is, but who collected it, where they collected it, when they collect it, has all this data associated with it.

Some of the fish in here are now, you know, critically endangered.

And so we can still get a lot of information from them even though they're, you know, protected in the wild now.

- [Narrator] Many of the 1.4 million specimens in the collection are 70, 80, even 90 years old, some even beyond that.

But Hughes says, with new technologies, these specimens still have scientific value.

- There's all kinds of ways to get data and information off these specimens that they didn't even envision.

And so what we try to think about is, well, how can these specimens be used in the future?

Like what, you know, what can we do now to make this collection as useful to researchers as those scientists, you know, 100, 200 years ago or you know, did for us.

- [Narrator] Now, before you go knocking on the door of the lab, unfortunately it isn't open to the general public, but select specimens are on display at the main museum.

While you never know what you'll see with a trip to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, the staff hope for one thing.

- By people coming and visiting the museum and seeing its collections and exhibits, meeting scientists, and talking to educators, we hope that people will learn something about the world around them, but then also feel inspired to go that next step and help protect the natural world.

(instrumental music) - [Narrator] From tranquil seashores, iconic battlefields, majestic mountain landscapes, and even historic high schools, the National Park Service interprets and protects some of the nation's most valuable treasures.

According to the nps.gov website, each year the more than 400 parks, historic sites and monuments under the park services care attract more than 300 million visitors.

In South Carolina, the National Park Service operates seven sites, most fall under the historic site or military park designation.

But there is one unique unto itself and it's all natural.

Welcome to the Congaree National Park.

Located a short drive from the South Carolina state capital of Columbia, the park offered Florida residents Ken Falvey and Beverly Chanley a fun option while road tripping around the southeast.

- [Ken] We kayaked down the South Cedar Creek waterway, which was absolutely gorgeous.

- It's the quietude.

You don't get quietude like we had in the last two days.

- The sheer beauty of this place is very, very unique.

Something that you just don't get very many places.

- [Narrator] The park averages more than 200,000 visitors each year, and they have a few ways to explore.

- [Jon] The primary way to get around and experience a park is either on foot, and then the other way that people like to really visit this place is going out on a kayak or canoe.

- [Narrator] Whether you kayak the waterways or stroll the boardwalk inside Congaree National Park, the environment that surrounds you offers you a unique glimpse into an almost lost world.

- We are the largest remaining section of old growth bottom land hardwood forests that remains relatively intact in the southeast United States.

26,600 some acres of old growth bottom line hardwood, that's out of what conservative view would've been 30 million acres prior to Europeans arriving here.

- [Narrator] Forests once only traversed by the American Indian tribes who made their homes here, an important part of Congaree's story that was once overlooked.

- It's very important to this landscape 'cause they were the people that were here the longest.

We have 12,000 years of documented Native American history in this region around the park.

- [Narrator] The park gets its name from the Congaree tribe and the river by the same name.

- The tribe that was here when the English arrived in South Carolina, would've been the Congaree, hence the name of our river.

A lot of the rivers here in South Carolina are named after those native tribes, so Watery, Santi, Guacamol.

All of them are named after the peoples who were living along those riverways.

So you do get a glimpse of what Native Americans, 1000, 5,000 years ago, maybe 10,000 years ago, may have seen when they were going through this landscape.

- [Narrator] When the early settlers arrived in the area, they didn't see a diverse ecosystem in need of protection.

They saw natural resources to be exploited.

- It's the late 18, early 1900s that industrial logging really begins to come into its own here in the southeast.

The couple decades after the Civil War, land here in the south is pretty cheap and Cyprus has become a really lucrative lumber.

Francis Byler was from Chicago.

He was a member of a timber family.

Byler bought, eventually around a 100,000 acres of land here in South Carolina, including over 15,000 acres here in West Congaree floodplain.

- [Narrator] Fortunately, logging never got a foothold.

- His first venture wasn't very lucrative here, and by the late 19 teens, things had kind of stopped logging wise here in the Congaree floodplain, and they really wouldn't pick up until the 1960s.

About 500 acres a year is estimated to have been cut between 1969, 1976.

So we're looking at maybe about 3000 acres did get clear cut.

- [Narrator] About this time a movement spearheaded by Columbia newspaper editor Harry Hampton, got underway to protect the remaining forest.

- He spent a lot of time out here at Congaree and he also went all across the southeast.

So he was seeing places that were the same kind of ecosystem and habitat, but he was seeing them after they'd been logged out.

And so that was what pushed him to begin advocating for this landscape to be protected.

- [Narrator] Hampton and others work resulted in the remaining track of land being designated by Congress in 1976 as the Congaree Swamp National Monument, eventually becoming Congaree National Park in 2003.

The Park's Visitor Center is named in honor of Harry Hampton.

The ecosystem here at Congaree National Park is defined as a bottomland hardwood forest.

- You're talking about trees that have significant age and that's gonna depend on the tree for what is old growth.

Hardwoods, maple, oak, and we're a bottomland forest because the majority of the park is a floodplain.

We've got 85 different species of trees.

The one that people are kind of most excited to see are the bald cypress.

They are an extremely long lived tree.

So on the eastern half of the United States, it's probably the longest lived tree you'll find.

They can live easily up to 1500 years with the right conditions.

- [Narrator] The other star of the park, towering loblolly pines.

- We've got the tallest and largest loblolly pine trees in the country here at Congaree because we have a lot of 'em growing in the floodplain.

So really good soil.

- [Narrator] Ranger Jon Manchester says, protecting the forest at Congaree National Park plays another important role.

- When the river floods, it fills in this bowl that we have here.

- [Narrator] It's what you might call a symbiotic relationship between the river and the forest.

- [Jon] You get that pulse of water that comes through, it drops a lot of nutrients.

Soil is replenished when we get those floods, and most of our floods typically are relatively minor.

- [Narrator] But when the floods are a bit more severe, the bottom land forest of the park gives back.

- A very interesting thing for us here as we interpret this landscape is that a healthy, intact bottomland ecosystem is actually very important for controlling the damage that large floods can create.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Narrator] A few times a year, Gaffney resident, John Martin, makes his way down to the park.

- [John] The boardwalk's great.

You can get off on some of these other trails and sometimes that's even better.

- [Narrator] An avid birder since the 1970s, Martin enjoys photographing the park's weaned residents.

Probably his favorite bird to capture within his lens, the pilled woodpecker.

- Some days I come out and I don't get a shot of one, but most days I'll at least get a shot of one.

- [Narrator] While the park is home to an uncountable number of creatures, there is one, sometimes unpopular, that at times is so prevalent the park installed this.

- So the mosquito meter's just, it's a little bit of a humorous way for us to just indicate to people, hey, it might be a little bit buggy today.

As a flood plain, you've got a lot of water, a lot of standing water, mosquitoes love standing water.

And in the summertime, depending on how much rain and everything we get, it can get a little bit mosquitoy.

But as annoying as mosquitoes are, they're an important part of our ecosystem here.

A lot of birds and other animals do eat them, and they are actually pollinators, so they do pollinate other plants.

So we do need them.

We just don't need them biting us.

- [Narrator] For almost 50 years, this unique and special attracted forest has been protected for the public to experience its grander.

- It's a part of our natural heritage here in the United States.

You know, it shows us what a landscape that once was very extensive looks like, that we really don't get to see these days.

So it's giving us a glimpse into our natural historical past here in our region.

And it's a part of our cultural heritage too.

It is such a special place.

I think it's one of the most unique and special parks within the park service that we have.

And it's an honor to be able to interpret it for the visitors.

- [Narrator] John Martin sums up his feelings about the park.

- John Muir said, "I'd rather be on top of a mountain thinking about God than being in a church and thinking about being on top of a mountain."

Well, it is kind of that way.

This was created for us to enjoy.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Narrator] Ah, the night sky.

Who hasn't looked up to take in the wonder of the cosmos and pondered what might be out there?

Considered one of the oldest of the natural sciences, astronomy goes back thousands of years.

In 1608, midway through an era known as the Scientific Revolution, Dutch spectacle maker, Hans Lipperhey, filed what's believed to be the first patent for a telescope.

But Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo was the first to study the night sky using a telescope.

More than 400 years later, the James Webb and Hubble Space telescopes might get all the press, but back on earth, astronomers around the world still look to the sky each night through telescopes.

Here in North Carolina on a rural hilltop near Graham, you'll find the Three College Observatory where astronomer Steve Danford and Anatoly Miroshnichenko study the heavens.

- He and I spend many hours every week alternating one of us observing, and then later on the other one takes it over.

- My research is in stars surrounded by large amounts of material, which is gravitational stuck to it.

- [Narrator] Most of the time, the telescopes time is focused on various research projects, but weather permitting, Danford and Miroshnichenko open the doors to the public.

- It's incredibly good for the two purposes we wanted it for.

And one of those purposes is to make it available to students from our universities.

And then we also wanted it available for people from the community.

We estimate we've had more than 40,000 people come to this observatory and look through this telescope over the years.

- [Narrator] On this night, high school senior, Leo Vanover brought his grandparents to share in his interest in science.

- I've liked it ever since I was little.

I'd say it's pretty eye-opening to sort of see the planets up there and the stars.

- [Steve] Doing the public nights are wonderful.

There's an enthusiasm that you can feel when people look at an astronomical object through the telescope.

- So we tell them stories about the objects they see.

Little kids come here and they enjoy viewing the sky, viewing those objects, and some of them may become future scientists.

- [Narrator] Now, if you're wondering how the observatory got its unique name, Three College, well Danford says... - There was a group of physicists, some from UNCG, the majority of them, one from Guilford College in Greensboro, and one from a NT in Greensboro.

And those physicists all got together and some of them had been teaching optics and working with telescopes and learning about telescopes.

And they decided to try to get a big telescope, a real telescope, not a toy telescope.

- [Narrator] Danford says UNCG hired him to write the grant proposal seeking funding from the National Science Foundation.

- The grant that came to us was $236,000 from the National Science Foundation.

And four years later we built a building and the telescope was much bigger than we thought we would be able to afford, a 32 inch telescope, one of the largest telescopes anywhere in the southeastern US.

- [Narrator] And a pivotal day, or in this case night, in a telescope's life.

- We had what's called first light.

The first time you have starlight shining through the telescope, and that was in May of 1981.

So we've had more than 40 years to use the telescope.

It's been incredibly effective.

- [Narrator] The Three College Observatory's primary purpose is for research and introducing college students to astronomy.

- Most of our students are introductory astronomy classes, and so they're not even physics majors, but they come here and it's fun to see that sometimes they scream because they do not expect to see, for example, Jupiter as big as detailed or the moon.

So they like it.

They are very excited and that's definitely a joy for a teacher.

But this big telescope, which is one of the only free telescopes like that in the entire east coast, we do lots of international collaborations with at least 10 different countries.

- [Narrator] Over the years, the observatory has been kept up to date with new technology.

- Astronomy as a whole has made an enormous transition from photography to digital electronics.

That was a huge transition and it improved our ability to see faint objects and to measure them accurately, enormously.

- [Narrator] When the observatory first opened, it required long nights at the actual telescope, but in recent years with the internet and modernization, things have changed.

- Four years ago, this entire observatory became automated.

So now we can observe remotely from any place in the world, wherever there is internet connection.

- [Michael] This box talks to the control box, which runs the motors, which actually turn the telescope and point it at its right star.

- [Narrator] If something goes wrong, Michael Shelton, who's a retired UNCG electronic supervisor, still likes to out.

- They'll have an issue like the other night, the track was dead.

So my UPS had bit the dust and so I bypassed the UPS and got the power back on the rail in a few minutes and got him back up and running.

- [Narrator] While the equipment is all high tech, sometimes the solution to a problem is a bit low tech.

- Sometimes in the winter, I have been over here that the grease was a little bit tight and the shutters wouldn't open up on top of the telescope and I just have to take a piece of pipe and bump 'em a little bit, and they'll open right up.

- [Narrator] As of spring 2024, all three institutions were still using the observatory for teaching and research.

But Danford says, the future for the telescope and the public nights is still uncertain.

- We don't know what the future is gonna be for this telescope.

UNCG right now is wrestling with the question of whether to even continue to teach astronomy and whether we teach, continue to teach upper level physics to our students.

How university, how UNCG decides that question will determine how much use can be made of this telescope in the future.

- [Narrator] No matter the future, both seasoned astronomers say the Three College Observatory brings value beyond what's on the surface.

- The better we understand the processes there and we can apply new methods of math or physics and they actually benefit from us too, because some of those processes can be modeled here and applied to other kind of branches of knowledge.

- We've sent a lot of students into fields like biomedicine, for example, or computational work because they started off in an astronomy course and the bug bit 'em and the bug was science and the interest in science.

So you can't ever predict how students will react to what they're learning in an astronomy class.

- [NaRRATOR] Natural science and history offer us a captivating look into what makes up our world, cultures, and even universe.

The insights you take away when you visit a natural science museum, a national park or observatory, might just inspire you or your kids to deep dive into a whole new world of discovery.

(upbeat music) Thank you for watching this episode of "Trail of History".

(upbeat music continues) - [Commentator] A production of PBS Charlotte.