Museums

A Museum You Should Visit

Hot Springs, South Dakota has a unique museum, The Mammoth Site. If you’re anywhere near South Dakota’s Black Hills, The Mammoth Site is worth a stop.

A Museum You Should Visit

You should make the trip to Thermopolis, WY to visit the Wyoming Dinosaur Center This museum has the most mounted skeletons of Mesozoic vertebrates I’ve seen in a single institution, plus many more interesting fossils or casts.

Wyoming Dinosaur Center has some great Paleozoic material. There’s a placoderm and ostracoderm exhibit, covering important taxa that you don’t see exhibited often. The Center has two Dunkleosteus armored skulls, both different than the cast on display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

A Museum You Should Visit

If you’re in or near Hutchinson, KS, you really should spend half a day at Strataca, previously known as the Kansas Underground Salt Museum.

You could combine this with a visit to the nearby Cosmosphere for a really weird experience.

A museum you should visit

If you’re in or near Hutchinson, KS, you should visit the Cosmosphere. Heck, if you’re in Wichita, you should visit the Cosmosphere. It’s that good.

Edit 2025-08-18 in 2024, the Cosmosphere was not as good

A Museum You Should Visit

If you’ve got kids, and you’re in Fort Collins, CO, you should visit Fort Collins Museum of Discovery. There’s a large amount of really amazing exhibits good for kids from about 2 to 13. There are some decent northern Colorado exhibits for older kids and adults, but the emphasis is on youngsters.

A Museum You Should Visit

If you’re in or around Denver, Colorado, you should visit Wings Over the Rockies. This museum has a flock of jets, airplanes, rockets and flying things.

You will see aerospace-related things there you can see nowhere else, and you’ll see them close up.

A Museum You Should Visit

If you happen to be in Casper, Wyoming, you should visit Tate Geological Museum. It’s a small, but very well done geology and paleontology museum. There’s interesting things for most family members, even well-informed 4-year-olds could have fun and learn things.