As years fly by and students move further into the technology age, the University offers a place where time stands still — the LSU Rural Life Museum.The museum celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Since its founding in 1970, the outdoor museum has been a gateway to historical Louisiana.And the attraction is popular. The museum receives about 60,000 visitors each year, with a recent record-breaking 20 percent increase in participation, said David Floyd, Rural Life Museum director.”It gives students a chance to see how their ancestors lived,” said Tonja Normand, the museum’s development director. “What we show is from the perspective of how the rural plain people lived.”The grounds cover 25 acres on a 450-acre parcel of land and feature 32 historical buildings such as slave cabins and a plantation overseer’s house, Normand said.The museum will commemorate its anniversary May 16 when it holds an open house. Admission will be free, and guests can tour the new visitor center that was recently completed after about a year of work.The center cost about $5 million to build and was funded through donations, Normand said. It features a theater and updated restrooms.Floyd said the goal was to create a comfortable building that supported the historic appeal of the museum.”We wanted to be stealthy and very low key,” Floyd said. “We didn’t want to interrupt the historical structure.”The center was constructed with materials found throughout rural Louisiana, like tin and old wood. One wall is made of logs dating back to 1840, Floyd said. But the center is only meant to act as an introduction to the outdoor part of the museum.”It whets your appetite for what you’re about to see outside,” Floyd said.The historical buildings, artifacts, and heritage crops like sugar cane, are funded by a donation to the University from a family passionate about preserving history.Steele Burden, who handled the University’s landscaping, and his sister Ione Burden, who directed social activities, made the land available to University agriculture students around the 1920s, said Associate Dean of Libraries Faye Phillips. Phillips recently wrote a book on the Rural Life Museum to be published this summer.”In the 1920s and ’30s, they began to develop new strains of crops, experiment with flowers and do a lot of agricultural work and experiments out on that land,” Phillips said.The Burdens donated the land to the University in 1965.”They were educated at LSU and worked for LSU, so they had a love for the University,” Normand said.Floyd said with a financial gift and 450 acres worth about $700,000 each, the Burdens’ donation is arguably the most valuable the University has received.”For a town this size … 450 undeveloped acres to be used for historical research and the Rural Life Museum … is unbelievable,” Floyd said. “It’s an almost mind-boggling gift.”The land was originally closed to the public and was meant to be an undeveloped green space, but Steele Burden began preserving artifacts that eventually evolved into the museum’s collections.”In 1970, Steele Burden had the idea of trying to preserve the elements of the working plantation, so that’s when the plantation section was created,” Floyd said. “From there, it expanded to rural life for all people – the yeoman farmer, free people of color, everybody.”The museum features a “vernacular architecture” exhibit detailing the differences in architecture of north and south Louisiana, as well as “Uncle Jack,” the first statue of a black man in America.Today, the museum has high educational value. The exhibits are closely related to history, geography and social studies skills beneficial to elementary school students preparing for the LEAP Test, Floyd said.The museum also allows University faculty to bring classes to the land free of charge and use it as an open-air classroom.Floyd said he is proud of the significance of the museum and hopes to continue its trend of excellence for years to come.”My dream for the museum is that the atmosphere of being in the country and being in a historic rural place will never change,” Floyd said. “When you come here you will feel like you’re in the fields of north or south Louisiana … you’re transported to another time.”- – – -Contact Ryan Buxton at [email protected]