National Museum of the Pacific War

Charles Henry Nimitz built a hotel in Fredericksburg in 1852, and his grandson Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz went on to command the U.S. Pacific Fleet in World War II. That connection turned a Texas Hill Country town into the home of a six-acre museum dedicated to the entire Pacific Theater. The complex grew from the restored Nimitz Hotel into a campus that includes a re-created Pacific island battlefield, a Japanese Garden of Peace gifted by the Japanese government, and an archive available to researchers by appointment.