Ulster American Folk Park

The Ulster American Folk Park stands outside Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is an open-air museum of more than thirty restored buildings that tell the story of Irish emigration to America over three centuries. The park grew from the Mellon family homestead, the birthplace of Thomas Mellon, who later founded a banking dynasty in Pittsburgh. Visitors can walk through whole streets of original houses brought from Belfast and other parts of Ulster. Traditional crafts such as blacksmithing, candle-dipping and open-hearth cooking are demonstrated daily. The park is worth the journey because it uses costumed guides and period displays to show the lives of emigrants. It also hosts special events that mark both Irish and American culture, including a three-day bluegrass festival every September. The Mellon Centre for Migration Studies offers courses and houses a specialist research library with maps, periodicals and the Irish Emigration Database. International exhibitions have featured topics from Irish-American boxing to the Indigenous peoples of North America. A visitor finds a recreated American frontier street with a tinsmith’s workshop and a Virginia general store. Beyond it lies an emigrant trail that leads to frontier houses dismantled in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Tennessee. The Ship and Dockside gallery includes a full-size replica immigrant sailing ship. Traditional foods such as soda bread and pumpkin pie are baked on open hearths throughout the site.