Try The New

Oakley Cabin AR Experience

^{A premiere collaboration between XR Montgomery and Montgomery Parks}
Bringing History Alive!

Welcome to Oakley Cabin, African American Museum and Park

Located in historic Brookville, just north of Olney Maryland, Oakley Cabin was once part of a larger plantation called Oakley. It was originally established during the late 1700’s by Colonel Richard Brooke, who was a Quaker within the community.

Oakley Cabin was originally built between the 1830’s and 1840’s, of hand-hewn oak logs with a stone foundation. It initially housed enslaved laborers. But after Maryland’s emancipation in 1864, it became home to free Black tenant families.

This cabin was home to anywhere from three to ten people at any one given time. It is also one of three cabins located within the area. 

Oakley Cabin is important to us today because it serves as a reminder of what life was like during this reconstruction period immediately after Emancipation. It provides for us examples of the achievements and the challenges faced by these freed families.

Guests view a demonstration at Oakley Cabin

What Is XR Montgomery?!

XR Montgomery uses Extended Reality (XR) technology to create a new way to discover history and interact with the world around us.

XR technology includes Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR). AR shows digital elements over the real world.  At Oakley Cabin, visitors will be able to use their smartphones to see the AR digital elements with the real cabin in background on the phone screen.  VR often uses a headset to show a fully digital experience.  MR is between AR and VR – it has interactive digital elements over the real world. You might use special glasses like HoloLens to pull digital object closer to you or break it apart with the real world in the background. Together, AR, VR and MR are called Extended Reality or XR.  And that’s how “XR Montgomery” got its name.

XR Montgomery was created by the Montgomery County Department of Technology & Enterprise Business Solutions (or TEBS) to create more XR experiences throughout Montgomery County.

Woman in historic clothing demonstrating plating a meal inside Oakley Cabin

How Can the Oakley Cabin AR Experience Help the Community?

This is the first AR Experience deployed at any historical site in Maryland and our goal is to expand access to the community.

The cabin is open between April and October on two Saturdays a month. That provides only 14 days a year for people to experience it with Montgomery Parks interpretative staff. The Oakley Cabin AR Experience will be available every day, in seven languages. It provides the ability to see inside the cabin for those with limited mobility. And it provides a fun new way for young and old to understand the history of the cabin and the lives of those who lived there.

University of Maryland's School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation – Historic Preservation Program used laser scanning and photogrammetry to take thousands of photos to create 3D models and fly overs. Montgomery Parks contributed its cultural, historical, and archeological research. And TEBS’s XR Montgomery brought AR technology and accessibility to the project.

Together, this provided a model to create new ways to explore history throughout Maryland.

People listening to a tour guide outside Oakley Cabin

What is the Oakley Cabin AR Experience?

The Oakley Cabin AR (Augmented Reality) Experiences provide a new way to discover African American history.

Eight different AR experiences have been created for Oakley Cabin. Visitors will use their mobile phone to scan QR codes throughout the park (using the camera or a QR code reader). A webpage will load to select one of seven languages. Scannable written versions of all audio are available for accessibility.

Visitors can see a 3D park interpreter avatar providing history of the cabin (QR#1) and a flyover video recreating the historical surroundings of the Oakley cabin community (QR#2), as well as 3D models of the cabin interior (QR#3) and exterior and foundation of the missing third cabin (QR#8 and QR#6). Artifacts found are shown in QR#6. And finally, interactive games to learn about history have been created (QR#4 and QR#5). Each experience includes information about Oakley Cabin’s cultural history and science of archaeology.

The QR codes will be available at Oakley Cabin in April 2024.

See for yourself! (And help us test it!)

Scan the QR Codes below or click on the images to discover a new way to experience history! This is a temporary website created to get feedback from the Digital Heritage Symposium attendees and friends of Oakley Cabin. These codes are designed to be used at the cabin with the real world park as the background. As a substitute, we have taken photos that you can display on your computer screen, and then use your smartphone to scan the QR code and have the digital elements appear over the photos. Or you can view these experiences outside. Experiences #3 and #4 are best viewed using any real world outdoor area.