Rarely seen items from the archives are on public display, featuring big documents, big events, big personalities, and big ideas from the region’s history. Organized by the National Archives at Kansas City, It’s Big features pieces of American history including: audio clips from the FBI’s surveillance of Kansas City mobsters; the original complaint from Brown v. Board of Education, the case that ended school segregation; documents and photos of famous personalities with a local connection, such as Negro Leagues baseball player Roy Tyler and Kansas City founding father John Calvin McCoy; and famous and infamous signatures found in the National Archives holdings, including Abraham Lincoln, Leon Trotsky, Sitting Bull, Walt Disney and the Birdman of Alcatraz.

Housed in an 1846 Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the museum features exhibits on the Osage Indians, Pony Express, steamboats, Civil War, coal mining, and Wentworth Military Academy. There is a memorial to the victims, mostly Mormons, of the Saluda steamboat disaster. Open May-October. Admission: $2; ages 6-18, $1.