http://www.agsem.com/about.html

Located on 55 acres of rolling farm ground, 2006 marks 30 years the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum has been here in Vista. Over that period our Museum has grown to become one of the premier educational and recreational facilities in North San Diego County. With over eleven hundred volunteers, our Museum's collections focus on the 1849-1949 era and demonstrate an Early California Farm; and the businesses that grew up to support farmers. Exhibits include farm equipment from horse drawn through modern row crop equipment.

About Three Hundred Forty-Five Days a Year, we are your standard static museum, albeit with 55 acres to display and exercise our equipment. Under the supervision of a Volunteer Docent, visitors can interact up close and personal with our collections. While our docent tells the age and history of each piece. Please feel free to still and video photograph our collections for personal use. For commercial use, or for publication, please contact our office.

Unique from traditional static museums, our collections are maintained in operating condition. Volunteers operate our equipment to help maintain and repair, our property and our collections. Usually select pieces of our collections are demonstrated in conjunction with Special Events. Our daily admission prices, published on the bottom of all of our pages in black type, are higher when we host Special Events. Our entire grounds are involved during Special Events, as such, paying only our low daily entry fee to just view our collections is not an option.

During the eight days each year during our Third and Fourth weekends of June and October, Spring and Fall Harvest Fair, Threshing Bee, Antique Tractor and Engine Shows; our grounds come alive with activity. Visitors have the rare opportunity to see crops taken from the field through to the kitchen. Traditional crafts and trades include farriers, weavers, soap and rope makers, broom makers and woodcarvers. Volunteer members supply support and man [and woman] power for all Museum programs and operations.

The AG&SEM is literally a self sustaining non-profit corporation. The bulk of our Museum's operating budget comes from activities and events promoted, planned and manned by our volunteer members. Our museum is also generously supported by the County of San Diego which provides our 55 acre museum site; and numerous corporate sponsors. Many of our Museum's educational programs, exhibits and our endowment fund are funded via grants and individual donors. Our museum is registered as a non-profit corporation and all gifts of collection items, cash or tangible property are tax deductible. Contact our Museum office for details.

Our collections number over 20,000 items, ranging from a 300 HP Allis Chalmers Corliss stationary steam engine with a 19,000-pound flywheel, to rare manuals and photographs. In recent years new buildings have been completed to house and exhibit our collections.

We have educational programs from pre-school through college internship studies. Our museum's elementary program, School Days, continues to expand to meet demand. Internship studies in Museumology, Collections Management and Small Business Administration are offered. Our Museum hosts a Boy Scout troop, and is the setting for studies and projects by a wide variety of groups ranging from 4-H to Head Start and ARC.

Numerous documentaries focused on our Museums collections have been filmed for movies, television and the video market. Our Museum is consistently featured in books and calendars sold through collector's groups and major booksellers. In addition, videos of our Threshing Bee Antique Engine and Tractor Shows are produced for our museum and sold nationwide. Watch for our equipment in the movies and made for television productions including Stargate, Muholland Falls, LA Confidential, Pearl Harbor, the HBO Series Carnivale, Tremors 4 and The Time Machine; just to name a few.

Just as in the 19th century, our Farmhouse is the center of activity. In our country kitchen volunteers show what a farm wife did. Using cold food storage options from ice boxes to electric refrigerators. Coal and wood burning stoves to gas and electric. Our volunteers prepare fresh bread and cookies, and there are tasty complimentary samples. In our gas lighted parlor volunteers show how a farm woman spent her days. Sewing clothing for the family, quilt making, on foot treadle sewing machines. There are samples of leisure and recreational activities from sitting and reading by kerosene lamp, playing board games, foot pumped organ music, to radio.

On our farm we have a Blacksmith shop and a Wheelwright shop. Steam and gas, stationary and mobile, industrial power units. Each year we grow a crop of winter wheat, demonstrating local dry land farming techniques. During our twice yearly Harvest Fairs, we demonstrate harvesting and shocking. Our Gristmill grinds crops into flour that you may purchase at a reasonable cost. During the summer months we grow a crop of irrigated Sorghum Cane, which is harvested and processed into Molasses, during our Fall Harvest Fair.

The nature of our Museum's programs evokes nostalgic memories of rural lifestyles and family traditions. More importantly, we believe it offers a means for young people to learn about and build upon the reassuring foundations of the past. It is our Museum's goal to capture an important element of our society and preserve it for present and future generations.