Old Sturbridge Village is a “must-see” destination to experience early New England life from 1790-1840. One of the country’s largest living history museums, OSV has a large staff of historians in costume, 59 historic buildings on 200 acres, three authentic water-powered mills and two covered bridges. Visitors can ride in a stagecoach, view antiques, heirloom gardens, meet the farm animals, and take part in hands-on crafts year-round.

A trip to Old Sturbridge Village, the largest outdoor history museum in the Northeast, is a journey through time to a rural New England town of the 1830s. Visitors are invited into more than 40 original buildings, each carefully researched, restored, and brought to the museum site from towns throughout New England. These include homes, meetinghouses, a district school, country store, bank, law office, printing office, carding mill, sawmill, gristmill, pottery, blacksmith shop, shoe shop, and cooper shop.

Authentically costumed staff, called history interpreters, carry out the daily activities of an early 19th-century community. Here you may wander country roads and visit with a farmer plowing fields, listen to the blacksmith's rhythmic hammering, or smell the aroma of bread baking in a fireplace oven. With four unique seasons and more than 200 acres to explore, there is always something new to see at Old Sturbridge Village.

The period portrayed by Old Sturbridge Village, 1790-1840, is of major significance because it was a time in which the everyday lives of New Englanders were transformed by the rise of commerce and manufacturing, improvements in agriculture and transportation, the pulls of emigration and urbanization, and the tides of educational, political, aesthetic, and social change.

The Village's portrayal of the past is grounded in award-winning historical research that includes archaeology, scientific analysis of 19th-century objects and buildings, and painstaking study of letters, diaries, account books, and other documents.