The NC National Guard’s long history will be the focus of a new museum
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- State provided site and $12M for new N.C. National Guard Museum in Raleigh.
- Collection of uniforms, weapons and artifacts stored; exhibits will tell service stories.
- Special exhibits will highlight Battle of Moores Creek Bridge and 30th Infantry Division.
The N.C. National Guard story begins with colonial militias and includes the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, airlift missions in Vietnam, vaccine distribution during the COVID-19 pandemic and deliveries of food and water to mountain communities devastated by Helene.
Now that history will be the focus of a new museum. The N.C. National Guard Museum will feature some of the Guard’s collection of thousands of artifacts and will highlight both what its soldiers and airmen have accomplished in the past and what they do today, said Col. Mark Almond.
“Telling the Guard’s story is extremely important,” said Almond, the director of process improvement. “My family knows what I do, but my neighbor doesn’t all the time.”
The museum will be off Blue Ridge Road in Raleigh, across from the N.C. Museum of Art. The state provided a former Department of Agriculture lab building, and lawmakers approved $12 million for construction, Almond said.
The Guard considered renovating the 50-year-old building, which for years had an M60 tank and an M110A2 Howitzer parked out front. But it determined that retrofitting laboratories into a public museum would be difficult and cost as much as or more than tearing the building down and starting from scratch, Almond said.
Demolition began in late October, and the tank and artillery piece have been moved to temporary locations at Guard headquarters across Reedy Creek Road.
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Construction of a new building is expected to begin in the coming year and be finished by the end of 2027. The building’s design should be completed this winter, Almond said, about the time a new nonprofit organization is formed to accept donations for the museum.
For now, the Guard’s considerable collection of uniforms, weapons and other artifacts are in a warehouse nearby. Many of the items were donated by former Guard members or their families, according to Staff Sgt. Gary Spencer, who oversaw the collection during his time as curator of the museum.
“There’s a story behind everything,” Spencer said in a 2022 video promoting the museum. “As long as something that comes into us belonged to someone that served with us, they’ve got a story.”
The museum will also have at least two special exhibits. One will be a diorama depicting the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge between North Carolina militia members and soldiers loyal to the British crown near Wilmington in February 1776.
The second will feature touch-screen kiosks where people can learn about individual men who served with the 30th Infantry Division. The division was composed of Guard soldiers who landed in France five days after D-Day and fought into Germany. In 2020, President Donald Trump awarded the division the Presidential Unit Citation for “extraordinary heroism” at the Battle of Mortain in Normandy in August 1944.
This story was originally published December 30, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
