ELDRED, Pa. -- During World War II, Americans launched a variety of volunteer efforts. Children participated in competitive scrap metal drives and helped their parents plant victory gardens while motorists planned errands to conserve the rationed gasoline.

But some of the weapons fueling the Allies' military might came from a north central Pennsylvania valley near the New York border, 3 miles north of a town called Eldred. There, the National Munitions Co. made mortar shells, grenades and cylindrical incendiary bombs, first for the British Royal Air Force and later for the United States. The rural plant operated around the clock daily, except Sunday, and plenty of folks from this McKean County town of 850 people found work there, especially a lot of real Rosie the Riveters.

More than 60 years after the war's end, that action-oriented, can-do spirit abides in Eldred, where a community museum honors the women who made weapons as well as the men who carried them. Many of the mementos in the exhibits were donated by locals, nearby residents and veterans.

"The women stepped up and did a marvelous job," said Nicholas J. Pascuzzi, curator of the Eldred World War II Museum. They wore white cotton uniforms with rubber buttons and enclosed, steel-toed shoes to prevent the creation of static electricity.

"When you're working around TNT, one spark will set it off," he said.

Between 1942 through May 1945, the National Munitions Company produced 8 million bombs, supplying the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army. Out of 1,500 employees, 95 percent were women, some of whom walked to work and earned 50 cents an hour.

The Eldred World War II Museum was largely funded by the generosity of Thomas "Tim" Roudebush, a Kansas businessman whose father, George, owned the land on which the munitions plant operated.

The seeds of the museum were planted after the war ended and Robert A. Anderson's older brother reunited with his family at a train station.

"He comes off the train and he has a samurai sword and he hands it to his kid brother," museum director Jay Tennies said. "That is what triggered Bob Anderson's lifelong passion for World War II."

Besides a wide assortment of mementos, including insignia pins, Mr. Anderson amassed an 8,000-volume library, now at the museum and open to researchers. The library also holds hundreds of veterans' oral histories captured on digital video by Gary Swanson, a Kansas veteran who is still collecting stories.

Western Pennsylvanians will feel at home in this 18,000-square-foot museum. An entire gallery is devoted to Charleroi native Mitchell J. Paige, a Marine and Medal of Honor recipient who, with 30 men, battled 3,000 Japanese ground troops on the island of Guadalcanal and held Henderson Field, a strategic air strip.

When it opened 12 years ago, the museum had one gallery in the storefront of a former insurance office. That gallery features 48 flags, which are hung from the ceiling and represent the Allied forces. Among them were China, the Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

"Even the flag of Italy is up there. Italy started out as an Axis power but after Mussolini was ousted, Italy switched sides and joined the Allies," Mr. Pascuzzi said.

In 1999, the museum expanded after the nonprofit acquired additional space in a former furniture store. The two buildings are connected by a hallway.

The museum welcomes 8,000 visitors each year, including people from Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Rochester, N.Y. One of the larger galleries features a new exhibition that focuses on the different types of media Americans relied on to learn about significant events in the conflict.

In one corner, you can sit and watch newsreels narrated by Ed Herlihy and Graham McNamee. The films play on a continuous loop, including scenes of the Russians invading Berlin, naval air raids off Okinawa, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt giving a speech and saying, "We shall send you in ever-increasing numbers," plus footage of the Nuremberg trials.

On the other side of the gallery are headphones and televisions screens that allow you to hear and watch cartoons that served as military training films. Made by Warner Brothers, the cartoons star "Private Snafu" and feature narration by Bugs Bunny.

The print media did its part, too. National Geographic Magazine published a war map of the Western Theater so readers could follow developments overseas. Time Magazine produced pony editions, which were pocket-sized versions of the weekly publication that fit in a soldier's pocket.

Yank, the Army weekly, was a magazine sold for 5 cents; each issue featured a photo or "pin-up" of an attractive woman. Yank also published poetry and prose submitted by enlisted soldiers.

In that era, the media tried to keep Americans' morale high by not reporting on military deaths or showing dead bodies in photographs, Mr. Pascuzzi said.

At least two exhibits appeal to children and teens. Tank Mountain, an interactive display using two remote-controlled tanks, allows two competitors to see who can propel their Army tank up the hill and to the castle first.

In the next room is a command center and observation post. The command center includes a desk, typewriter, radio switchboard and potbellied stove. Such posts, set up behind main military lines, allowed military leaders to receive information about battles through radio communication.

A wide range of weaponry is exhibited, too.

"A lot of our soldiers were souvenir hunters," Mr. Pascuzzi said as he pointed out weapons military personnel retrieved and brought home.

There's Capt. Bill Scheiterle's pistol that he carried during World War II, the same pistol his father carried across the fields of France in World War I.

There's a Japanese sword and a sniper's rifle, which the soldier modified by carving the handle to fit his hand, removing the flash cover and the end stock to lighten the weapon. There's a KA-BAR knife, used by Marines at the battle of Okinawa and still made today by Cutco in the nearby town of Olean, N.Y.

How badly did we want to win World War II? One look at the children's games from an exhibit about life on the home front will tell you.

There's an intriguing war puzzle called "Put the Yanks in Berlin" and a hand-held board game called "Trap the Jap in Tokyo" where you roll a bead into place.