Museums33.2291° N, 117.2545° W
Vista, CA
Acres of working tractors, steam engines, blacksmith equipment and industrial machinery preserve technologies rarely seen operating at ordinary museums.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
Museums in California
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Museums22
Suggest a stopSmall, specific collections run by people who care far too much.
- Museums40.8077° N, 124.1467° W
Eureka, CA
A working Victorian-era-style mill preserves antique woodworking machinery, blacksmithing, printing and traditional craft techniques rather than displaying them only behind glass.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums38.0358° N, 120.4010° W
Columbia, CA
A remarkably intact Gold Rush business district survives as a state park with historic storefronts, stagecoaches and period demonstrations.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums34.0632° N, 118.3564° W
Los Angeles, CA
Natural asphalt still bubbles through Hancock Park where enormous collections of Ice Age bones were trapped and preserved beneath modern Los Angeles.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums37.3987° N, 118.3460° W
Bishop, CA
A preserved railroad depot, locomotives and relocated historic buildings form a sprawling outdoor museum of Owens Valley transportation and settlement.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums34.1018° N, 118.3405° W
Los Angeles, CA
A commercial museum presents recreated torture devices and staged historical scenes in an intentionally graphic, theatrical format.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums33.1329° N, 117.2383° W
Carlsbad, CA
Tiny working engines, machine tools, aircraft and mechanical models demonstrate extreme precision engineering at miniature scale.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums37.8104° N, 122.4170° W
San Francisco, CA
Hundreds of coin-operated automata, arcade machines, mechanical fortune tellers and antique amusements remain playable at Pier 45.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums34.1000° N, 118.3290° W
Los Angeles, CA
The Hollywood museum displays funeral material, crime-related artifacts, serial-killer artwork and other macabre objects at its current Selma Avenue location.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums34.0259° N, 118.3951° W
Culver City, CA
This deliberately enigmatic museum mixes genuine history, obscure scholarship, miniature displays and exhibits that resist clear separation between fact and invention.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums33.1272° N, 117.3170° W
Carlsbad, CA
An instrument-industry museum traces how guitars, keyboards, drums and other commercial instruments changed, with many examples visitors can hear or play.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums34.1438° N, 118.2546° W
Glendale, CA
Historic electric signs and kinetic light art turn discarded commercial neon into a museum collection devoted to glowing urban archaeology.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums34.3074° N, 118.4640° W
Sylmar, CA
A large collection of restored luxury automobiles shares space with mechanical musical instruments, orchestrions and other lavish machines.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums37.7737° N, 122.2766° W
Alameda, CA
Rows of playable pinball machines trace the art and mechanics of the game from early electromechanical tables through modern designs.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums38.2323° N, 122.6368° W
Petaluma, CA
Steve Sansweet's enormous private Star Wars collection holds hundreds of thousands of objects and can only be visited on scheduled guided tours; there are no public walk-in hours.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums37.3337° N, 121.9240° W
San Jose, CA
A museum founded by the Rosicrucian Order houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on display in western North America inside an Egyptian-revival complex.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums32.7312° N, 117.1487° W
San Diego, CA
Large operating layouts recreate Southwestern railroads in painstaking miniature, filling an unusually large museum devoted almost entirely to model trains.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums35.7628° N, 117.3731° W
Trona, CA
A small desert museum preserves mining, mineral and community history from the unusual industrial town built around Searles Lake.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums34.9994° N, 117.6506° W
Boron, CA
Mining equipment, local artifacts and a full-size twenty-mule-team wagon display preserve the borax history of Boron and the surrounding desert.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums34.2139° N, 118.5001° W
Van Nuys, CA
Neon signs, restaurant artifacts, arcade machines and forgotten storefront pieces preserve the visual history of the San Fernando Valley.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums34.0113° N, 118.4042° W
Culver City, CA
Cold War artifacts from the former Eastern Bloc range from propaganda and uniforms to everyday household objects, turning recent political history into an unusual material archive.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums34.1349° N, 116.3138° W
Joshua Tree, CA
A tiny converted photo booth is packed with crocheted animals and objects, forming one of Joshua Tree's smallest and most specific museums.
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- Seasonal or ticketed