For nearly 40 years, Jim Riley and his family have lived on their 760-acre apple farm in Oak Glen, California, in San Bernardino County. Jim and his wife built a Colonial-inspired home on the farm in 1994, and were thinking about doing 18th century dinner theater. Shortly thereafter, the Rileys were approached by parents of local elementary school students asking for historical field trips at the farm. “We started doing American Revolution-themed tours, and Civil War reenactments for 5th graders in Southern California,” Riley said when we talked recently. “Within five years, we were seeing 50,000 students a year, and in the last 17 years, more than 1.2 million students, parents and teachers visited programs on the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the California Gold Rush.”

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