Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center to reopen next month
CLARKSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - A museum at a southern Indiana state park is getting ready to unveil more interactive exhibits about the area's geography and cultural history.
The Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center is scheduled to reopen to the public on Jan. 8 after undergoing a $6 million renovation, the News and Tribune reported (http://bit.ly/1keEzZS ).
"We're trying to involve as much sensory experience as we can," said Dani Cummings, the park's executive director.
The featured attraction at the state park near the Ohio River town of Clarksville is a 400-million-year-old fossilized coral reef. Visitors will also be able to interact with a "live aquarium" to see the types of plants and animals that can be found in the river near Louisville, Kentucky.
The new exhibits at the center, which has been closed for 13 months, were created in partnership with design company Solid Light based in Louisville. Many of the previous exhibits dated back to the park's opening in 1994.
Exhibits where visitors saw photos and read text are being replaced by touchscreen computers. The center will guide visitors through an immersive experience which includes four major exhibits, starting at the start of the falls 390 million years ago in the "Devonian Sea" exhibit and then "A Changing Landscape," which shows how glacial shifts affected the area and what the first people there were like.
At "Converging Cultures," visitors will learn about the interactions between Native Americans and the first European settlers. The last major exhibit is "The Falls Today."
The center also will have specific exhibits and activities for children in preschool to second grade.
Construction started on the renovations in 2014. The main rotunda was redesigned starting in 2011, and features hand-blown glass sculptures created by artist Brook White of Louisville-based Flame Run Studios.
The featured attraction at the state park near the Ohio River town of Clarksville is a 400-million-year-old fossilized coral reef.
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Information from: News and Tribune, Jeffersonville, Ind., http://www.newsandtribune.com