There are places where you go to learn about history, and then there are places where you can walk straight into it. Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan is very much the latter. Spread across 80 acres, adjacent to the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, the village is filled with historic homes, workshops, farms, businesses, and other buildings that were relocated here from around the country and preserved as pieces of American life.

You can walk through Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, step inside the Wright brothers’ bicycle shop, visit the courthouse where Abraham Lincoln once practiced law, ride in a genuine Model T, or simply wander down a dirt road while a horse-drawn carriage passes by. And that may be what I love most about Greenfield Village: history isn’t tucked under glass. You hear it, you smell it, walk through it – and for a few hours, the modern world feels surprisingly far away.

I’ve visited both Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum many times, and in all seasons, and have taken too many photos to ever choose a handful that complete captures the experience. Maybe that’s because Greenfield Village isn’t really something you can capture in a photograph.

It’s something you have to go see for yourself.