Ulster American Folk Park

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Ulster American Folk Park

The Ulster American Folk Park is an open-air museum near Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It opened in 1976 and is part of National Museums Northern Ireland.

The park tells the story of Irish people who moved to America over 300 years. It has more than 30 exhibit buildings with costumed guides and displays of traditional crafts. Many buildings are original and linked to local families, including Mellon House, the birthplace of Thomas Mellon, founder of the Mellon banking dynasty.

Visitors can taste traditional foods such as soda bread and pumpkin pie cooked on old hearths. There are farm animals and agricultural displays. The park is open most of the year.

Live demonstrations show everyday skills from the emigration era, like blacksmithing, candle-dipping, embroidery, spinning, printing, and open-hearth cooking. The park hosts events and exhibitions tied to its collections.

Past special exhibitions have explored Irish emigrants in boxing and Indigenous North American cultures. The park marks occasions like U.S. Independence Day, Halloween, Easter, and Saint Patrick’s Day. A three-day Bluegrass Music Festival is held each September.

The visitor centre has a cafe and shop, and the permanent Emigrants exhibition explains the Irish story of moving to America before you explore the outdoor areas.

Parking is free. The entrance area houses the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies (MCMS), which offers a library and courses about Irish migration, in partnership with Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast. The library holds about 10,000 books and other materials.

In the Old World area you’ll see original streets, a printing press, a bank, an old police barracks, an old school, and two churches. The Brig Union is a full-size replica immigrant ship in the Ship and Dockside gallery. The New World area recreates an old American street, with a tinsmith display and the interior of a Virginia general store.

The frontier journey features the 1720s Fulton stone house, rebuilt here, and other frontier homes such as an Appalachian log house from Pennsylvania, the 1830 West Virginia home of Richard McCallister, and a brick plantation house near Nashville, Tennessee.