Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Small, specific collections run by people who care far too much.
Baraboo, WI
Baraboo was winter headquarters for the Ringling Brothers, and Circus World preserves historic circus buildings, wagons, posters, costumes and performance traditions on the original grounds. Seasonal live programming turns the site into both a museum and a surviving fragment of circus culture.
Salt Lake City, UT
Interactive exhibits include meteorites, planetary displays and space-science installations in downtown Salt Lake City. The real extraterrestrial material and large-format astronomy programming make it a useful science-side OddWay stop.
Petersburg, AK
A small local museum preserves Petersburg's fishing, cannery, Native and Norwegian-American history. Its community-built collection is especially useful for understanding why this isolated Southeast town looks and feels different from many other Alaska ports.
Clayton, NM
Hundreds of dinosaur footprints are exposed in sandstone beside Clayton Lake, including tracks left by several different kinds of dinosaurs. The trackway is reached by a short trail and is one of the clearest in-place fossil stops in the state.
Cañon City, CO
Within Garden Park, this developed BLM site interprets one of the area's historic dinosaur quarries and provides access to a short trail toward the Marsh Quarry area. It is a specific, routable fossil-history stop rather than a broad regional pin.
Harrisville, WV
This privately owned collection packs thousands of pieces of automobile, gasoline-station and roadside memorabilia into a roughly 13,000-square-foot building. The owner welcomes visitors without a normal admission charge, but the museum operates largely by appointment or when someone is available, so call before making a detour.
Cody, WY
The collection centers on corroded, broken and excavated firearms recovered from battlefields, settlements, ranches and archaeological contexts.
Providence, RI
RISD Museum preserves the coffin and mummified remains of Nesmin, an Egyptian priest who lived during the Ptolemaic period. The elaborately decorated coffin and surviving mummy make this one of Rhode Island's most unusual museum objects. The museum currently lists the object as on view, but gallery rotations and hours should be checked before visiting.
Bangor, ME
This large transportation museum preserves an eclectic collection of Maine road, rail, military, farm, and commercial vehicles. Exhibits range from snowplows and fire engines to motorcycles, trains, military equipment, and historic machinery, making it much broader and stranger than a conventional car museum.
College Park, MD
The museum stands beside the world's oldest continuously operating airport, where the Wright brothers trained military pilots beginning in 1909. Exhibits cover early flight, unusual aircraft and the airport's long experimental history, with active aircraft often visible just outside.
Chiloquin, OR
An extensive outdoor collection of historic logging machinery, railroad equipment and relocated pioneer structures documents the machinery that transformed Oregon's forests.
Hartford, CT
The Connecticut Museum of Culture and History holds an exceptional collection of early American tavern signs painted with animals, symbols, portraits and sometimes bizarre imagery meant to attract travelers who could not necessarily read. Display availability can rotate with exhibitions.
Astoria, OR
A major maritime museum devoted to the famously dangerous Columbia River Bar, shipwrecks, navigation, Coast Guard rescues and the working river.
Columbia, CA
A remarkably intact Gold Rush business district survives as a state park with historic storefronts, stagecoaches and period demonstrations.
Boalsburg, PA
The Boal estate contains an imported European chapel associated with the Columbus family along with an unusually eclectic collection of historic objects. Guided tours include claims of Columbus-family artifacts, religious pieces, weapons, carriages and other material gathered by generations of the Boal family.
East Windsor, CT
Historic streetcars and electric railway equipment are preserved on a working museum line where visitors can ride vintage trolleys. The collection is particularly atmospheric during its seasonal nighttime and Halloween programs.
Windsor, CT
Inside Northwest Park, historic tobacco sheds and exhibits preserve the tools and techniques behind Connecticut River Valley shade tobacco. The highly specialized museum explains an agricultural industry that once shaped the region's landscape and international trade.
Decatur, AL
The Cook family’s collections grew from an interest in insects and pest-control education into a full natural-science museum. Today the exhibits range from preserved specimens and fossils to live animals and immersive ecosystems.
Moab, UT
A short BLM trail reaches large sauropod and theropod footprints preserved in sandstone north of Moab. The tracks remain in place in the rock rather than behind museum glass.
Salem, MA
A horror and monster museum packed with life-size creatures, film props and highly detailed recreations of famous movie monsters. The gallery has moved within Salem over the years and is now on Essex Street, so older location pins should not be used.
Bailey, NC
This museum preserves the tools and working world of rural physicians from the days of house calls, horse-drawn transportation, and small-town pharmacies. Antique surgical equipment, medical instruments, medicine bottles, and doctors’ vehicles make the collection unusually tangible.
Little Compton, RI
Among Little Compton's stranger preserved artifacts is a rope-like mass traditionally described as having been vomited up by a cow. The object has survived as part of the local historical collection precisely because generations found it too bizarre to discard. Museum access is seasonal, so confirm current hours before traveling.
Kennewick, WA
An active excavation preserves the remains of a Columbian mammoth discovered in the hills above the Tri-Cities. Public access is through scheduled tours or events, not independent entry onto the research site.
Dwight, IL
An independent collection celebrates 1980s cars, memorabilia, toys, and pop culture in a deliberately nostalgic specialty museum.
