The Mariners' Museum and Park

For over eighty years, the history of the ocean and its relationship with humankind has been told and displayed in one of the largest maritime museums in the world. In 1930, The Mariners' Museum was brought to life by the shared vision of Archer Milton Huntington and Homer L. Ferguson. Huntington was son of railroad and shipping magnate Collis P. Huntington, who founded Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company just a few miles from the Museum. Ferguson, the head of Newport News Shipbuilding at the time of the founding, also served as The Mariners’ Museum’s first President. Today, The Mariners’ Museum sits in an urban oasis – the 550 acre park is now home to the 167-acre Lake Maury and the Noland Trail - a five-mile shoreline trail with fourteen bridges. Within the Museum itself you will find 90,000 square feet of exhibition galleries including the prestigious International Small Craft Center, and the award-winning USS Monitor Center. This state-of-the-art exhibition and conservation lab houses 210 tons of artifacts from the Civil War ironclad Monitor, which were recovered from NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. The Mariners’ Museum Library and Archives is now housed in the Trible Library on the campus of Christopher Newport University, which is adjacent to The Mariners’ Museum Park. The Library is home to over 78,000 books; 800,000 photographs, films, and negatives; and over 1 million pieces of archival material, making it the largest maritime library in the Western Hemisphere.