The Walter Elwood Museum, founded in 1937 by a long-serving Amsterdam schools superintendent, is the kind of cheerfully eclectic small-town American museum that gathers everything within reach and puts most of it on display. The collection covers the natural history of the Mohawk Valley, the carpet industry that built the town, Mohawk and Oneida material culture, military artefacts, and oddities such as a mummified cat and a section of the original Erie Canal lock gates.
The museum moved into a restored former school building in 2014 after the original site was destroyed by Hurricane Irene flooding in 2011. Free, open most weekdays; check ahead for hours.