New exhibits for 2026!

The museum is closed now, and we're working non several new exhibits for the 2026 season, which begins May1. Among the exhibits we have planned:

Wedding gowns

General stores and grocery stores

Town bands

Artifacts of the pre-Potawatomi Indians

The Gerber Company's arrival in Three Oaks

If you have artifacts or photographs or information on any of these topics, we'd be pleased to hear from you. You can email us at trotommuseum@gmail.com.

Returning exhibits

LOCAL DOCTORS

From frontier physicians who battled malaria and rode on horeseback to their house calls to the Three Oaks doctor who invented several patent medicines to the New Buffalo physician who spent weeks of every year caring for the destitute people of Haiti to the Galien doctor who used hypnosis to help patient lose weight and quit smoking-- this exhibit focuses on the fascinating intersection of history and medicine.

SAWMILLS AND GRAIN MILLS

Mills were among the earliest efforts to area pioneers to harness power not provided by humans or animals. Water wheels and steam boilers gave early farmers a market for the trees they were clearing to create farm fields, and allowed them to move past mere subsistence agriculture to cash crops. This exhibit was created with the help of Pears Mill in Buchanan.

THREE OAKS COMMUNITY FAIR

Decades before the Berrien County Youth Fair was created, Three Oaks hosted the county's big celebration of the agricultural way of life, in the 1910s through the 1930s. The fairground-- land owned by the Featherbone Company-- included a horse-racing oval and grandstands, which you can see in aerial photographs that are part of this display.

COLOR MY HISTORY

With a little help from AI, we've added color to some of the most interesting photos in the museum collection. It really makes them come alive-- come see for yourself!

WORLD WAR II

From the jungles of Burma to the beaches of Normandy to liberating Nazi concentration camps, local men and women served with distinction in World War II. The exhibit includes a World War II-era kitchen that highlights how the great war was fought on the domestic front as well as the battlefield.

CAMERAS/PHOTOGRAPHERS

See one of the oldest cameras ever to depict life in the Three Oaks area (the one at right), a camera operated by one of the first female photographers in SW Michigan.

See home movies shot all around the Three Oaks area-- Galien at work in the 1950s, a seaplane carrying vacationers to Lakeside, basketball heroes returning to New Buffalo, and 1960s beauty queens touring area towns.