Walhalla’s small downtown district holds an outsized amount of history. Three museums preserve the area’s Native American heritage, Oconee County’s story, and the service of local veterans, all within walking distance of Main Street.
Oconee History Museum
Oconee County’s history from prehistory to present, housed in an 1892 tobacco factory.
Museum of the Cherokee in SC
The only Cherokee museum in South Carolina, preserving the Upstate’s Lower Towns heritage.
Oconee Military Museum
Honoring veterans from the Revolutionary War to today, at historic Patriots Hall.
Oconee History Museum
Located at 123 Browns Square Drive, near the historic Walhalla Depot, the Oconee History Museum is housed in an 1892 tobacco factory building. Exhibits include two fully preserved dugout canoes rescued from local rivers, a walk-in Stumphouse Tunnel exhibit, a Depression-era tenant farmer’s house, the Louise Russell Alexander Children’s Corner, and the Oconee Ancestor’s Gallery. The museum is a nonprofit and is featured on the Upstate Heritage Quilt Trail.
Museum of the Cherokee in South Carolina
Museum of the Cherokee in South Carolina
Housed in a historic brick building built in 1905, this museum preserves the history and culture of the Cherokee “Lower Towns,” more than two dozen villages that once thrived across the northwest corner of South Carolina. The collection includes pottery, Cherokee stickball baskets, soapstone pipe bowls, a cooking stone, spears, and arrowheads.
Oconee Military Museum at Patriots Hall
Oconee Military Museum at Patriots Hall
Patriots Hall was built in 1913 by the Civilian Conservation Corps using black granite removed from the Stumphouse Tunnel. Now a museum honoring U.S. veterans, its two floors hold military artifacts and displays spanning the Revolutionary War to current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.