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.
Goshen, CT
Beyond the live-animal park, Action Wildlife maintains a museum filled with mounted animals and natural-history displays. The unusual concentration of taxidermy makes it a distinct stop within the larger wildlife property; current park admission includes museum access.
Bristol, CT
Hundreds of American clocks and watches trace Connecticut's outsized role in mass-produced timekeeping. Rooms filled with ticking mechanisms, novelty clocks and elaborate cases make this specialized museum much stranger than its quiet historic-house exterior suggests.
Winsted, CT
Founded by Ralph Nader, this museum is devoted to civil wrongs, product-liability cases and the lawsuits that changed American consumer safety. Exhibits turn famous cases involving automobiles, dangerous products and corporate negligence into an unexpectedly strange museum subject.
Storrs, CT
More than 2,500 puppets from different cultures and theatrical traditions make up this University of Connecticut collection. Changing exhibitions range from folk puppetry to highly experimental creations, making it one of the state's stranger specialized museums.
Cheshire, CT
Tens of thousands of character toys, lunchboxes, figures, advertising pieces and cartoon collectibles crowd this family-run museum. The collection spans generations of American pop culture and has the dense, slightly overwhelming feel of a giant toy attic.
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.
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.
Scotland, CT
A small museum connected to the Scotland Public Library preserves an obsessive collection of roughly 1,500 woodworking planes spanning several centuries. Its extremely narrow subject matter is exactly what makes it an OddWay-worthy stop.
Danbury, CT
A former railroad station and yard preserve locomotives, rolling stock, a working turntable and other heavy railway equipment. The station also has a film connection: Danbury's railroad facilities appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Strangers on a Train.'
Rocky Hill, CT
Thousands of Early Jurassic dinosaur tracks were uncovered here by accident in 1966. Hundreds remain visible beneath a retro-futuristic geodesic dome, while many more were reburied for preservation below the surrounding landscape.
Putnam, CT
Putnam honors Boxcar Children author Gertrude Chandler Warner with a museum housed inside a real 1920s railroad boxcar. The tiny seasonal museum contains books, memorabilia and personal objects connected with the author.
Haddam, CT
A tiny museum dedicated almost entirely to the Connecticut River's historic shad-fishing industry preserves nets, tools, boats, photographs and wonderfully specific fish-related artifacts. It traditionally opens only during the spring shad season and by appointment.
Middletown, CT
Physician and amateur naturalist Joseph Barratt chose a fittingly strange monument: his grave incorporates casts connected with Connecticut dinosaur tracks and fossil plant material. It is an eccentric intersection of nineteenth-century science and funerary art.
Terryville, CT
Thousands of locks, keys, safes and lock-making tools fill a museum in a town once central to the American lock industry. Displays range from ancient locking concepts to an enormous cannonball safe, and the museum operates on a limited schedule.
Waterbury, CT
Thousands of buttons form a permanent collection inside the Mattatuck Museum, ranging from military and fashion pieces to unusually elaborate carved and novelty examples. The collection grew from a much larger archive assembled during Waterbury's industrial era.
Hartford, CT
Hidden inside Connecticut's Old State House is a recreated early American cabinet of curiosities packed with taxidermy, unusual specimens and historical oddments. Its best-known residents include a two-headed calf and a giant preserved alligator.
Stratford, CT
A small museum inside Stratford's railroad station explores the town's central role in helicopter development, including Igor Sikorsky's work. Exhibits include aircraft components, models, a Sikorsky cockpit and a helicopter flight simulator. The museum operates seasonally.
Bristol, CT
Antique carousel horses and other hand-carved animals fill this museum devoted to the art and mechanics of the American carousel. Visitors can also see restoration work and ride a working indoor carousel.
Orange, CT
PEZ's Connecticut visitor center holds the world's largest public collection of PEZ memorabilia, a giant dispenser and windows into the working candy factory. It turns one of the world's strangest candy-delivery systems into a full museum stop.
Middlefield, CT
Exposed rock at this small park preserves Early Jurassic dinosaur footprints that visitors can see and touch without entering a museum. It is a compact but unusually direct encounter with Connecticut's prehistoric past.
Norwich, CT
Among the art and historical collections at the Slater Memorial Museum is a preserved human arm brought back from Egypt during the nineteenth century. The unexpected mummy fragment is one of the strangest objects in an otherwise traditional museum.
Groton, CT
The world's first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, is preserved beside the official U.S. Navy Submarine Force Museum. Visitors can descend into the submarine's cramped interior and explore the strange engineering of life underwater.
Uncasville, CT
Founded in 1931 by Mohegan medicine woman Gladys Tantaquidgeon with her father and brother, this is one of the oldest Native American-owned and-operated museums in the United States. Its collections and setting preserve Mohegan material culture from a community-controlled perspective.
