Parks Canada is all about costumed interpreters pretending to be from a specific time period, like the Vikings at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland and the fur traders at Fort Langley, British Columbia.  However, in the U.S., the National Park Service (NPS) has decreased the presence of living history reenactors over recent decades.  In March 2024, Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site near La Junta, Colorado announced it was removing its costumed interpreters except on specific weekends, similar to the Civil War sites like Gettysburg National Military Park (neighboring Eisenhower National Historic Site also has living history weekends commemorating World War I and II).  There are still blacksmiths to be found at some NPS sites and weapons demonstrations at others, but private museums are the main place to find this type of interpretation today in the U.S.  So we decided to make a list of NPS sites where you can still travel back in time.  Please let us know if you have any favorites that we left off.  Click here to see all our Top 10 lists.

10. Fort Vancouver National Historic Site (Washington)

Reconstructed buildings include the bakehouse, blacksmith shop, chief factor’s house, fur store, and bastion with costumed reenactors inside

9. New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park (Louisiana)

Park rangers play concerts at the New Orleans Jazz Museum

8. Fort Laramie National Historic Site (Wyoming)

Order a sarsaparilla at the bar at this significant stop on the Oregon Trail (come on the 4th of July for sack races, cannon firing demonstrations, and fireworks)

7. Lowell National Historical Park (Massachusetts)

Watch working textile machinery inside the old Boott Cotton Mills

6. Fort Larned National Historic Site (Kansas)

The soldiers, blacksmith, schoolteacher, commissar, and officers’ wives love to share stories of this extraordinary place on the Santa Fe National Historic Trail

5. Golden Spike National Historical Park (Utah)

Colorfully reconstructed train engines run daily in the summer to evoke the spirit of May 10, 1869

4. Grand Portage National Monument (Minnesota)

Rendezvous with costumed reenactors who demonstrate canoe building, bread baking, and weapons firing at this reconstructed North West Company headquarters on Lake Superior

3. Castillo de San Marcos National Monument (Florida)

If you do not want to pay the admission fee to enter the fort, you can still watch the cannon-firing demonstrations atop its corner bastion for free from outside the moat

1. Cuyahoga Valley National Park (Ohio)

Stop at the Canal Exploration Center at working Lock 38, experience living history at Hale Farm and Village (fee), and board the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad for a train ride

…and finally our #1 National Park Service Sites for living history:

1. Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site (Montana)

All things “cowboy” are remembered here with volunteer interpreters roaming on horseback

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Honorable Mentions

Colonial National Historical Park (Virginia)

Next door to the NPS site is Jamestowne Settlement with reenactors at the Powhatan Indian Village, fort, and three reproduction ships (plus, don’t miss nearby Colonial Williamsburg, the national capital of living history)

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site (North Carolina)

Step inside the NPS visitor center’s Elizabethan Room, then buy tickets for “The Lost Colony” outdoor musical performed most nights throughout the summer (there is also a musical held outside Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, North Dakota)

Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site (District of Columbia)

Live theater is still performed at this infamous site of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (but they officially will never stage the play “My American Cousin” that Abe was watching that night)

Boston National Historical Park (Massachusetts)

The NPS does not utilize costumed volunteers, but you can hire a guide who does, plus pay to participate in your own tea party by chucking replica bundles into Boston Harbor

Jewel Cave National Monument and Wind Cave National Park (South Dakota)

Guided cave tours using lanterns are a fun way to explore underground caverns similar to how tourists did it before the invention of electric lights (also available at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky and Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve)