The Roarbots’ series of NPS Adventures takes a big-picture view of one location within the National Park Service and highlights some of the best activities that site has to offer. This is usually done through a kid-friendly lens and almost always includes activities and suggestions we can recommend from personal experience. And pictures. There are lots and lots of pictures. Glad to have you aboard!

Welcome to Thomas Edison National Historical Park!

Stats

• Thomas Edison National Historical Park
• Location: New Jersey
• Established: 1962
• Admission: $15/person (valid for 7 days); under 16 are free
• Social Sites: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

Everyone knows his name. Most people think he invented the light bulb, which is kind of true. Electric lights already existed, but Thomas Edison and his team came up with the incandescent lamp in 1879 – which proved to be cheaper and more reliable for home use. So it caught on and made Edison a household name.

Edison’s name is also connected to the phonograph, the movie camera, the microphone, and hundreds of other inventions. But he didn’t work in isolation. He wasn’t a “mad genius” working by himself in a garage. Far from it.

Indeed, perhaps his greatest invention was HOW he chose to invent. Edison established an industrial research and development laboratory that employed dozens of scientists and technicians.

His most famous achievements –  the incandescent light and the phonograph (which built on experiments pioneered by Alexander Graham Bell) – were done in his first lab at Menlo Park, NJ, thus earning him the moniker of the “Wizard of Menlo Park.” But the lab complex in West Orange, which he opened in 1888, was be the birthplace of many of the 1,093 patents he earned in his lifetime.

Laboratory Complex

The West Orange complex is 10 times the size of Edison’s Menlo Park lab and includes several different buildings. In Edison’s time, the main laboratory building (Building 5) housed a research library, machine shops, experimentation labs, and Edison’s office. Today, all three floors are open to the public and include some 20,000 square feet of exhibit space.

The first two floors are set up to look like they might have during the lab’s heyday. Each level is primarily open workshop space that feels like a factory, and you get a sense for just how much work and activity would’ve been going on here every day. Nearly 100 people working on various projects, performing experiments, tinkering, and running tests. And Edison moving among them, offering advice like a wizened scientific general commanding his troops.

The third floor includes some smaller labs and offices, but it also features exhibits of Edison’s inventions and some of the items from the National Park Service’s museum and archival collection. That collection, by the way, includes some 400,000 artifacts, not including 48,000 sound recordings, 10,000 rare books, 60,000 photographs, and nearly five million documents.

The complex also includes separate buildings with chemistry, physics, and metallurgy labs. The Chemistry Lab is open to the public, and rangers give scheduled talks and answer questions about what went on there. Trust me, you’ll want to make time for that. The rangers really help contextualize and illuminate (see what I did there?) the work done by Edison and his team.

Glenmont Estate

Glenmont was the home of Thomas and Mina Edison, which was built in 1880 and they purchased in 1886. It’s a 29-room Queen Anne style house, and it’s gorgeous. After Thomas died in 1931, Mina remarried and continued to live in the house until 1947.

The house is located in a still-residential gated community about 1/2 mile from the visitor center and laboratory complex. In order to visit, you must pick up a vehicle pass from the visitor center (211 Main Street in West Orange), which will allow you to pass by the gate and park near the house.

If you want to go inside and visit the house, timed tickets for guided tours are distributed at the visitor center on a first-come, first-served basis. The tours do fill up, so if you’re interested in checking out the house, plan on getting to the visitor center early. It’s also only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (except January through March), so yeah, some planning is required.

Surrounding the house is the grave site of Thomas and Mina Edison; the gardener’s cottage, potting shed, and greenhouse; and the garage. All are accessible, and the garage is especially interesting since it houses some of the vehicles Edison owned, including a 1911 Electric Model L-1, a 1914 Electric Model 47, and a 1922 Model T given to Edison by Henry Ford.

Junior Ranger

Like most NPS sites, Thomas Edison NHP has a park-centric Junior Ranger program. Kids get an opportunity to learn about Thomas Edison, his inventions, and the impact both had on U.S. (and world) history. The Junior Ranger program is one of the highlights of any NPS visit for the little Roarbots. It wouldn’t be a visit without a passport stamp and a Junior Ranger badge/pin! And at Thomas Edison NHP, they offer both a patch AND a pin!