Penderlea Homestead Museum

Located just a twenty minute drive west of Burgaw, North Carolina, amid a sea of cornfields, Penderlea Homestead Museum encapsulates a post-Depression Era moment in rural North Carolina living.

Housed in a modest two-bedroom retired and restored farm home, the museum offers a peak at the implements and small luxuries of daily life in 1930s interior Pender county.

Penderlea Homestead Farms was the seminal result of 1934 New Deal legislation intended boost rural economies and curtail climbing urban populations.

Ultimately 300 farms comprised more than 10,000 acres at Penderlea, cultivated by farmers who had become unemployed and bankrupted due to our nation's Great Depression. Similar projects followed suit in 36 other states.

With its lovingly restored oak floors and tongue-and-groove pine paneling, period furniture, and local historic memorabilia, Penderlea Homestead Museum is a refreshing leg stretch at the end of a short scenic drive.

Guests enter as friends through the back porch, an early laundry room, into an open kitchen-dining area. The tour then turns through a polished great room and down a short hall, branching into two amply-sized bedrooms for the time, complete with closets.

Photos of early Penderlea farmers abound on walls and doors, and era curiosities adorn every surface.

The house includes one of the first indoor bathrooms and toilets, and a central enclosed porch.

Outside, guests may wander down to the barn and corn crib, smoke house and chicken coop, or just enjoy the shade offered by the beautiful old magnolia in the front yard.