Alishan TownshipHigh Elevation MuseumJoin Trip
Last Change Time:2017-11-09Published by:Planning Section
The Alishan High Mountain Museum is located in the Alishan Forest Recreation Park and in the southwestern of the Alishan Hotel. Alishan was a primitive forest area of more than 30000 hectares.
The whole mountain area includes tropical zone, sub-tropical zone, temperate zone and frigid zone, so it has rich tree species to be proud of. Therefore, the Japanese set up a High Mountain Plant Museum in 1912 to cherish these precious natural resources. After the Taiwan Forestry Bureau took over the place, they reorganized it and the exhibition contents.
Today the Alishan High Mountain Museum is a wooden red architecture. They keep the machines and tools used during Alishan’s early cultivation, such as a model of the wood-collecting machine from the early cultivation, a planning model of the Alishan Forest Recreation Park, and horizontal saws made by the Americans, the British and the Japanese in the early days. There is a mini “Wu Fong Temple”. Next to it are many models of the aboriginal people’s houses, gathering places, storages. There are many daily life tools, such as bows, spears, pipes, wooden pestles for rice, harmonicas, etc. People can even see an old telephone of the ancient time.
Besides these aboriginal people’s clothes, accessories and life gears, there are specimens of Taiwan high mountain animals like wild goats, wild pigs, water deer, cloud leopards and mountain cats, and liquid specimens of different birds, snakes and amphibians. Specimens of butterflies, insects,high mountain rats, and bats, and wax-leaf specimens of Alishan high mountain plants are alsohere. In addition, specimens of Alishan geology, soil, and trees, models and diagrams are available too. You can see all the five major trees: hemlock spruce, red cypress, Taiwan Japan cypress, Taiwan Siaonan, and Luanda spruce.