Springfield Armory National Historic Site
By As will become even clearer over time as I continue to write here, I can be pretty obsessive about things. One of those things is museums. Museums really affect me in strong ways–I often either love or hate what I see and get riled up about it.
Yesterday, I visited Springfield Armory National Historic Site in Springfield, Massachusetts. It is the site where the American military made most of its guns from the end of the Revolution through the mid-20th century. So the site is pretty much about guns.
I’ve never understood the obsession men have with guns. I love a good western, don’t get me wrong. I have no real problem with violence in movies. But the obsession with guns as a physical object, or military maneuvers more broadly, has always completely confounded me. A lot of young men who are into history get super excited about wars and guns. I always liked history and was seemingly hard-wired into the career I eventually chose. But even as a 17 year old extremely nerdy young man, I never cared at all about guns. I remember picking up an overview of the Civil War when I was about that age. It was a popular book that went into great detail about the battles of the war. It was probably the most boring book I’d read to that time. I don’t care if the 27th Missouri Volunteers were to the left flank of General Hooker. Who gives a shit? Maybe Farley can enlighten me on why I should care.
Given all of that, perhaps the Springfield Armory National Historic Site was not the National Park Service site for me. Because it’s basically a collection of guns. Muskets from the Revolution, rifles captured from Native Americans in western battles, World War II-era sidearms–if the American military used or made them, they were there. I’m not particularly inclined to say anything negative about the National Park Service. Its funding is atrocious, as it is a victim of the national disinvestment in infrastructure and, well, just about anything that has made this nation great since 1933. While attendance at the nature parks has skyrocketed, it has declined at the historical parks. Because of this, and because of the inconsistent admission charge policy of the parks (some charge a good bit, others nothing, and the funds are not distributed equally between parks), the quality of the historical parks varies widely. Some are awesome–I’d recommend Harper’s Ferry, Lowell, and the New Bedford Whaling park to anyone. Others are pretty poor–Fort Vancouver and Bent’s Old Fort for instance lacks much interpretation at all.
Unfortunately, the Springfield Armory falls at the lower end of the many parks I have visited. They don’t charge anything and they clearly have not received the funds for a museum upgrade, so they start at a disadvantage. And although I really don’t care about guns, I do understand that they appeal to people and I totally accept their necessity as a way to draw people into the site. And even I can briefly find them interesting. Seeing the Civil War era machine guns helped me to understand why that war killed so many people. It turns out that sending men into machine gun fire may have been a bad idea.
At the same time, it gets under my skin to see a park underperform to what it could be under the circumstances. Without much if any additional funding, the park could do a better job. First, it is totally unclear how to proceed through the museum. I even asked where to start and didn’t get a good answer. You could reorganize the whole thing to have us start in 1782 and continue through the 1950s. Second, while the park does kind of highlight the Armory as part of the story of American industrialization, which is good if incomplete, it could do a better job incorporating some of the big trends or events in American history into the museum. For instance, it was the Armory that Shays’ Rebellion hoped to raid in 1786. This was just mentioned in an easy to miss note, but I was totally fascinated. That’s one of the most important events in post-Revolution American history. I don’t believe any National Park site discusses this in detail. Why not incorporate the Shays’ Rebellion story here more?
As for why there were random pictures of other national park sites taped to some of the displays, I have no idea. I’d kind of understand I guess if they wanted to remind us of other New England historical sites. But while I would like to go to Alaska and visit Katmai, I couldn’t quite figure what I was supposed to get out of that. To steal one of their guns and shoot a grizzly bear when I visit?
Today, the Springfield Armory is most a community college, outside the museum. Could be the most beautiful community college in the country, with its expansive military grounds and old buildings. But the fact that the military moved its weapon production somewhere else in the mid-twentieth century is a story too–one of deindustrialization and the decline of a lot of New England cities (and let’s face it, Springfield is not exactly in great shape. I saw so many old buildings being torn down when I was driving through there, I thought I was in some urban renewal nightmare). I understand that this is not the glorifying story the NPS is under pressure to tell at its sites. But it is an important story. Why doesn’t the military make its weapons here anymore?
If your basic response to this post is wondering why I am getting so uptight about a small NPS site that caters to people with different interests than I, just understand that I think the public interpretation of American history is very, very important. And I’ll be talking about more museum experiences in coming months.