“Making Connections: Stories from the Land” is the new permanent exhibition at the Los Altos History Museum
Sal Pizarro/The Mercury News
There’s something very Los Altos about using a tablet and augmented reality to learn about a train station represented in a diorama of the city as it was in the1930s. That sums up the constant push and pull between Los Altos’ agricultural past and its Silicon Valley surroundings.
Those intersections can be found all over “Making Connections: Stories from the Land,” the new permanent exhibition at the Los Altos History Museum two years in the making that opened last weekend. The exhibition ambitiously attempts to tell the story of Los Altos — as well as the Santa Clara Valley at large — from the Ohlone days through the orchard years and finally to the Silicon Valley of today. It does this in an engaging, hands-on way using touch screens to tell the tales of the past, complemented by audio histories and display cases of artifacts related to the many people who have lived in this place.
“The creative team wanted to leverage modern technology to tell an evolving story in a dynamic way,” said Nan Geschke, a lead donor and the exhibition team leader. “The underlying digital format…cont.
Visitors can use a tablet with augmented reality to find out more information about historic structures represented in a diorama at “Making Connections: Stories from the Land,” the new permanent exhibition at the Los Altos History Museum, which opened Feb. 11, 2023. (Sal Pizarro/Bay Area News Group)