The concept for a Museum in the Streets is the brainchild of Dr. Patrick Cardon who lives in our neighboring town of Cushing. A trained Egyptologist and museum consultant, Cardon spent many years abroad and still maintains a home in France. While he introduced this idea and put it into fifteen French villages first, he chose Thomaston as his first venture for the museum in the United States.

The outdoor museum is comprised of a series of twenty-five plaques with historic photographs and legends, in both English and French, about the town's history. The plaques are placed throughout the historic district and placed as close to the spot where the original photographer had stood when taking the pictures more than 125 years ago. In that way, you can view the plaque and then raise your eyes to see the same scene as it appears today. Surprisingly, many of the old photographs are not that different from the way the town looks today.

Because Thomaston has such a long and rich history, the museum is especially important to visitors, many of whom wonder when first seeing Thomaston, what the people had done in this small town to leave behind such a wealth of historic houses, many of which bear the architectural beauty and integrity of a time period long passed.

Thomaston does indeed resemble a nineteenth century village instead of a twenty-first century one. As such, it is one of the best preserved working towns of the historic past.

Brochures showing the entire route of the tour and the location of all of the plaques are easy to find. Every Main Street business and shop, as well as the town office, has them. You need only go into any of these businesses and pick one up. There is no particular order in which the plaques should be viewed, you start at any point and read as many or as few as you wish. Because the route is actually quite long, you may wish drive part of the way or take the tour in two parts with a break for lunch or a snack part way through.