Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park
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The Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park is a Virginia museum, run as a state park, dedicated to preserving the history of the southwestern part of the state. It is located in Big Stone Gap, in a house built in the 1880s for Commonwealth Attorney General Rufus A. Ayers. The structure was acquired by the state in 1946 from a foundation managed by C. Bascom Slemp. Much of the museum collection focuses on the coal boom of the 1890s; there are also exhibits dedicated to the history of Big Stone Gap and the surrounding area, and the story of the pioneers that migrated westward during the eighteenth century.