Thronateeska Heritage Center, Albany

About Thronateeska Heritage Center

Thronateeska Heritage Center in Albany, Georgia explores human, natural, and physical sciences through exhibits and collections. Visitors encounter a 20-foot skeleton cast of Zygorhiza, a 36-million-year-old whale ancestor with both pointed and saw-edged teeth, discovered in Twiggs County with a shark preserved in its belly. A half-scale model of the Wright Flyer hangs in the Science Museum, commemorating the first powered airplane flight in 1903. The Train Exhibit documents Southwest Georgia's railroad history, including Albany's Union Depot built in 1913, which served five different railroads. The Georgia Museum of Surveying and Mapping, located within the History Museum, displays more than 100 surveying and mapping instruments dating to the eighteenth century alongside surveys and maps from across Georgia. Additional exhibits cover the history of Bob's Candy Company, which invented the Keller Machine to mass-produce candy canes, and the Artesian City, documenting Georgia's first free-flowing artesian well. The center also houses the South Georgia Archives with nearly 10,000 books and boxes of regional records.