THOMASTON – A sign-studded trail that will take about 45 minutes to walk will soon be this midcoast town’s “museum in the streets.”

The $21,000 project is part of a growing movement to make historical subjects more accessible to the fickle and fast-moving public.

Thomaston’s “museum in the streets” project will involve a series of old photographs at historic sites and text in English and French explaining what went on at the location.

The project is sponsored by the Thomaston Public Library and the Thomaston Historical Society. Fred Moon of Cushing and credit card lender MBNA helped provide the money to pay for it.

Organizer Patrick Cardon, 54, of Cushing, who recently moved to the area from France, is a museum consultant who says he came up with the “museum in the streets” concept while working in France.

As vice president of the historical society in Pontlevoy, France, Cardon said his answer on how to draw more visitors to the society’s museum was to take the museum outside.

“It took hold,” he said during an interview in Thomaston. “It appeals to people’s hearts. It’s community.”

Sometime this summer, the sign-guided tour will allow people to walk primarily along Main and Knox streets to some of Thomaston’s treasures, such as Montpelier, a replica of the home of Revolutionary-era Gen. Henry Knox, who was a big Maine landowner and George Washington’s first secretary of war.

The tour will continue past some of the elegant houses designed and built in the mid-1800s by architect James Overlock. It will move past the site of the former Maine State Prison, which dated from the early 19th century. The panel photo of the prison will show it when it had wooden barracks. “This should be a people-stopper,” Cardon said.

One of the 25 panels, or signs, will feature a photograph from the late 1950s of then-Town Manager Harold Putnam and Fire Chief Edwin Anderson near an old fire engine now housed in the Maine State Museum in Augusta, Cardon said. The panels measure 20 by 20 inches.

The panels, which will be made in France, have photographs, a town seal and pertinent information, as well as other points of interest around town. The signs are made from Formica and are guaranteed for 10 years, he said.

One of the panels will be duplicated so that one can be placed at the former location of the Knox mansion at the foot of Knox Street, where the Thomaston Historical Society is located, and one at the current mansion, on the corner of Routes 1 and 131.

Two additional 48-by-64-inch panels will feature a map of the walking tour, photos of all 25 historic sites and information about the “museum in the streets.”

Brochures with maps of the tour will be available at area shops, so that visitors will have a chance to do some shopping while in town and to talk with merchants about the area.

Cardon said he is working with some other towns in Maine that want to do the same thing.

When he first approached the Town Office about his project, he was told he needed the support of the historical society, he said. From there, he got the Thomaston Public Library’s backing, too.

“It’s really little known how important Thomaston is in the history of Maine,” library board president Nancy Griffin said. “In the long term, we hope this will attract tourists,” she said.

But tourists are not the only focus, according to Cardon.

Few residents really know their town’s history and the project could prove an opportunity for schoolchildren to learn about their past, he said. Schools could have a treasure hunt of sorts, he said, where children go through the tour and are tested on the knowledge they pick up along the way.

Luthera Dawson, the town’s oldest living historian, according to Griffin, was instrumental in helping develop a plan for the Thomaston tour. Dawson, who turned 91 on June 6, said recently that the museum in the streets idea is “one of the nicest things” to happen in town.