Padre
Island National Seashore
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Virtual Museum
The National Seashore has a collection of over 7,000 objects of historic,
cultural, or scientific interest as well as a small archives of historic
documents. Because the storm surges of hurricanes can pose danger to any
facility constructed on the island, the museum collection is currently stored
off-site at the Connor Museum at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. To make the fullest possible use of our museum collection, in spite of its being in storage, the National Seashore is developing a Virtual Museum to enable e-visitors to learn more about the objects in the collection and how they are used in developing a knowledge base of the island. Because the lists and basic facts of Padre Island's history, flora, fauna, and geology are presented in the Nature and Science section of this website, the Virtual Museum (VM) will use photographs of objects from the museum's collection along with pertinent data to exhibit important facets of the National Seashore's museum collection, on which much of our knowledge of the island is based.
Each of these sources gives its own perspective on the island, but no single source gives a complete view. To form the most complete view possible, a variety of these sources should be used in researching or studying a single subject. For example, to study arrowheads found on the island, the archaeology section will show photos of the arrowheads in the collection while background information might be found by following a hyperlink to the Smithsonian Institution, and the photographic collection may show photos of other Indian points that may have once been in the collection, but are no longer part of it. To facilitate a multi-source analysis, each webpage will include a navigation bar that leads to a separate webpage for each source. In addition, the VM will be designed to allow information to be exchanged between e-visitors and park staff by allowing to send requests for information to the park's visitor center. In the future, we hope to develop a web log so that e-visitors can post suggestions for hyperlinks or other sources of information, as well as comments on the VM. The Padre Island National Seashore Virtual Museum is designed to be a dynamic, interactive, environment that facilitates learning about the park's significant natural and cultural resources. The staff of the National Seashore hopes you enjoy the experience. Please note that development of the Virtual Museum is a long, complex process and therefore the parts of the VM will be placed on line as they are developed. Even then some may not be complete. This is because we are attempting to make as much information available to the public as possible in the shortest amount of time. Please report any broken links to the museum coordinator: PAIS_Museum@nps.gov. If a link appears broken (i.e. with a small red x instead of a photo), click on it anyway. The photo will probably appear. Back to the top
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Although the
storage facility is not open to the general public, researchers are welcome to
use it. All visits to the facility, however, must be coordinated through the
Padre Island National Seashore Museum Coordinator by calling the Malaquite
Visitors Center at (361) 949-8068. All visits will be escorted by a member of
the park staff. 
In addition on to photographs, the VM
will use other cutting-edge sources of data:
the museum ANCS+ database , which lists each object in the collection (along
with important data) and a collection of hyperlinks to other authoritative
sources of information (such as the Handbook of
Texas Online). By using this approach, the VM enables e-visitors to use a
multi-source, multi-discipline methodology to developing their own
interpretations and conclusions about the island.