Many studies have been completed on historical consciousness in museum visitors of all ages, however, the topic of collective historical consciousness as compared to the potential of a collective current identity in small, rural history museums lack the same exploration. The Kings Mountain Historical Museum is a local history museum and nonprofit corporation created to honor the history and ‘edu-tain’ the small, rural community of Kings Mountain, North Carolina.In these small towns, there is such a powerful and extensive sense of community, and the ways in which residents understand and connect to their own histories is of particular importance and interest as a model for other small museums. Through electronic and paper mail surveys to visitors and patrons of the museum, I have attempted to understand levels of historical consciousness and collective identity development amongst Kings Mountain Historical Museum visitors, and the formation of a place attachment and general placemaking. Survey questions were formatted with response options that generally provide positive, negative, or neutral information about the subject matter, and the survey concluded in two short-response style questions specifically included for respondents to provide voluntary additional information relevant to the museum and other questions in the survey. The results from my survey and the short-response questions showed that the Kings Mountain Historical Museum is successful in promoting a collective identity amongst Kings Mountain community members, positively influences placemaking and place attachment for the community, and promotes historical consciousness amongst visitors. Additionally, the museum is successful in educating and engaging visitors both with new information and by affirming prior knowledge, and positive correlations between length of residency and frequency of visits and higher levels of historical consciousness. Future direction for the museum should involve the engagement of the minority populations in Kings Mountain. The survey results have the potential to catalyze conversations between small museums and the communities they represent, and spur the development of additional programming, volunteer engagement, and education initiatives.