Vesterheim explores the diversity of American immigration through the Norwegian-American experience and presents historic and contemporary folk arts in the Norwegian tradition. Vesterheim means "western home" in Norwegian. The first organized group of Norwegian immigrants arrived on the Restauration, a small sailing ship, in 1825, and since then nearly a million migrants came to the United States from Norway. They and generations of their descendants continued to look to Norway to understand themselves from the perspective of their western home. Vesterheim's history began in 1877 when Norwegian-born professors at Luther College started collecting and preserving objects for study, and by 1895 the college museum focused on materials related to Norwegian and immigrant traditions. This early preservation of objects that later generations might have discarded became an important contribution to preserving immigrant history in America and gave the collection special significance. The collection included five buildings now in Vesterheim's Heritage Park, beginning with the Egge-Koren home in 1913. Open-air exhibits on the site were developed from the early 1970s, with displays about pioneer industries installed in the stone mill and more buildings added. Heritage Park was steadily taking shape in 1976, the year of the United States' Bicentennial, and by 1992 the outdoor exhibits included 12 buildings dedicated to telling the stories of Norwegian immigrants in the upper Midwest and the life they had known in Norway. Interpretive panels throughout Heritage Park examine the Norwegian immigrant experience, including the push-pull factors behind Norwegian immigration, the 19th-century removal of Native Americans that allowed settlement in this region, and the waves of immigrants that moved westward. The pioneer experience remains central even as the story of Norwegian Americans continues into the present, with themes of community building, mutual assistance, and adaptation running through the stories of these buildings and the people who built and used them.