//
Photo: Daniel Mayer (talk · contribs), CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Manzanar is the site of one of ten American concentration camps, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II, from March 1942 to November 1945. Although it had over 10,000 inmates at its peak, Manzanar was one of the smaller internment camps. It is located in California's Owens Valley, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, approximately 230 miles (370 km) north of Los Angeles. Manzanar means "apple orchard" in Spanish. The Manzanar National Historic Site, which preserves and interprets the legacy of Japanese American incarceration in the United States, was identified by the United States National Park Service as the best-preserved of the ten former camp sites.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
The Eastern California Museum features a diverse collection of artifacts that reflect and illuminate the unique history of Inyo County and California’s Eastern Sierra region. They have a large collection of Indigenous Paiute-Shoshone basketry, and an exhibit on the Manzanar War Relocation Center with many pictures of day to day life in the camp. Outside is a steam locomotive, which occasionally offers rides on its short track, and a native plant garden.