The museum first opened as the Florida Military Heritage Museum at a storefront in Fishermen's Village on Pearl Harbor Day, 2001. In 2003, it merged with a local aviation museum located at Charlotte County Airport, becoming the Military Heritage and Aviation Museum.[1] Because its lease had run out, the museum was forced to relocate to another location within Punta Gorda in 2005, but it eventually returned to Fishermen's Village in September 2007, in a new location three times as large as the previous.[2] In April 2018, it unveiled plans to move to the IMPAC building, [3] a former business training center located on West Marion Avenue, and began renovating the theater and outfitting two floors of the building with flight simulators and other interactive exhibits. The new location officially opened in April 2019.[4][5]
