RALEIGH -- Things that fit inside the North Carolina Museum of History’s new exhibit, its largest ever:

Two full-size houses.

Authentic tobacco and textile mill façades, two stories apiece....

The Story of North Carolina exhibit winds its way across 20,000 square feet and 14,000 years of history....

The first half of the exhibit, which ends just before the Civil War, is already open. The second half, opening Saturday, starts at the War between the States and travels through Reconstruction, industrialization, two world wars and the Civil Rights movement, up through the present decades of rapid growth and the descent of The Big Three (furniture, textiles and tobacco) as the state’s primary employers....