In the Barren Creek Heritage Museum, more than thirty permanent exhibits tell the story of the Barren Creek area & the town of Mardela Springs from 1660s to ca. 1950, and highlight specific aspects of life in the local area .

Visitors entering the Museum step into a large exhibit gallery, and stroll through 300 years of the area's history. Puckamee (Nanticoke) Indians, tobacco planters who shipped their crop from the Barren Creek warehouse, grist millers and sawyers & farmers, enterprising shipbuilders & seamen & merchants, hotel keepers and spa operators & distributors of mineral water, free black pioneers and spiritual leaders --- these were the brave and daring ancestors who created a life along the banks of the Nanticoke River and the creeks feeding into it. These exhibits reveal their tenacity, their ingenuity, and their faith as they grew and prospered. Their story unfolds in pictures, maps, and bits and pieces of our tangible past.

The Museum seeks to collect those historical artifacts and papers which clearly reflect the social, cultural, economic, and political heritage of the area around Mardela Springs and western Wicomico County from the 1600s through the early to mid-1900s. In addition, the Center accepts those objects which also reflect the heritage of the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland and lower Delaware, and the Chesapeake Tidewater, primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Items will be accepted only as outright donations; no items will be accepted on long-term loan basis.