Landmark Park, in Dothan, Alabama, is an agricultural museum that educates visitors about rural life in the 19th century. Dothan Landmarks Foundation, established in 1976, is responsible for the park's administration. Landmark Park boasts a church, a pharmacy, a schoolhouse, a general store, and a gazebo, all dating from the 1800s. Landmark Park's working farm, dubbed the Wiregrass Farmstead after the region of Alabama in which the park is found, offers re-enactments and demonstrations of all of the various activities common to 19th century farms.
Visitors to Landmark Park will typically learn about the details of 19th century farm life in rural Alabama. Volunteers and staff give educational demonstrations of such common period farm activities as quilting, butter churning, plowing with animals, spinning and weaving. Talks on farming and gardening are regularly given at Landmark Park. Special events, such as the Victorian Christmas or the Old Fashioned Ice Cream Social, occur on a yearly schedule. Other popular annual events at the park include the Wiregrass Heritage Festival and the Johnny Mack Brown Festival.
In addition to historic structures and educational demonstrations, Landmark Park offers visitors wildlife presentations and nature walks on both trails and on a raised boardwalk. Children can enjoy a barnyard playground, or an educational presentation at Landmark Park's planetarium. The park is also home to a 1800s schoolhouse, a church, and a general store. Old-fashioned sodas can be purchased from the drugstore's functional period soda fountain.
The Dothan Landmarks Foundation typically seeks preserve all historic areas in and around the town of Dothan, Alabama. Landmark Park was founded with donations of land from the Dr. Sam West family and the McFatter family. The foundation purchased and additional parcel of land in 1993. Many of the structures found in the park were also donated. Since the park has only a few full-time staff members, volunteer labor is considered essential to its proper functioning, and volunteers donate thousands of hours of labor to the park each year.
Many of the structures found in Landmark Park are original, though some have been gathered from other parts of Alabama's Wiregrass region and moved to the park's location. The region is named Wiregrass after the thin, tough grass native to it. The area was also once home to massive cypress trees, but settlers cut most of these down in order to build homes with their wood.
