Museums45.8856° N, 123.6140° W
Elsie, OR
An outdoor collection of giant steam donkeys, locomotives, logging equipment and timber-industry artifacts sits beside the highway at historic Camp 18.
- Access
- Open to visitors
Museums in Oregon
Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Museums20
Suggest a stopSmall, specific collections run by people who care far too much.
- Museums42.6432° N, 121.8828° W
Chiloquin, OR
An extensive outdoor collection of historic logging machinery, railroad equipment and relocated pioneer structures documents the machinery that transformed Oregon's forests.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums46.1902° N, 123.8232° W
Astoria, OR
A major maritime museum devoted to the famously dangerous Columbia River Bar, shipwrecks, navigation, Coast Guard rescues and the working river.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums45.2039° N, 123.1429° W
McMinnville, OR
The enormous Hughes H-4 Hercules 'Spruce Goose' dominates a museum filled with aircraft, spacecraft and Cold War-era technology.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums42.2193° N, 121.7911° W
Klamath Falls, OR
A large private collection displays Native American artifacts, stone tools, beadwork, baskets and Western art; the museum itself notes more than 100,000 artifacts in its holdings.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums45.5353° N, 122.6976° W
Portland, OR
A deliberately bizarre museum mixes cryptids, fake medical oddities, interactive art and sideshow-style displays into one of Portland's most unabashedly strange stops.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums44.6217° N, 124.0465° W
Newport, OR
Oregon State University's public visitor center turns active marine research into exhibits on deep-sea life, coastal ecology, earthquakes and ocean science.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums43.9659° N, 121.3415° W
Bend, OR
Indoor and outdoor exhibits combine wildlife, Indigenous history, logging, frontier life and high-desert ecology in a museum built around the region's unusual landscape.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums44.6367° N, 123.1076° W
Albany, OR
Volunteers carve and paint an elaborate menagerie for a working hand-built carousel, with the carving studio and museum visible alongside the finished ride.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums45.5165° N, 122.6180° W
Portland, OR
Inside Portland's giant video store, a museum displays screen-used costumes and props among a collection of more than 90,000 rental titles.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums46.1885° N, 123.8355° W
Astoria, OR
Housed in the old Clatsop County Jail used in The Goonies, this small museum focuses on movies filmed in Oregon and lets visitors make short green-screen movie scenes.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums45.5073° N, 122.6612° W
Portland, OR
See massive operating steam locomotives and restoration work inside the home of Portland's historic locomotive collection.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums45.5743° N, 122.9484° W
Hillsboro, OR
A former ranch house holds meteorites, petrified wood, fluorescent minerals, crystals and one of the Pacific Northwest's strongest public geology collections.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums44.6368° N, 124.0536° W
Newport, OR
The Newport Odditorium packs shrunken curiosities, optical illusions, unusual artifacts and interactive exhibits into a long-running Bayfront attraction.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums42.1038° N, 123.6815° W
Cave Junction, OR
One of America's earliest smokejumper bases preserves buildings, aircraft history and equipment from the era when firefighters parachuted from here into remote wildfires.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums45.5182° N, 122.6834° W
Portland, OR
A compact oddities shop and museum combines taxidermy, natural-history curiosities, macabre objects and rotating displays.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums45.5232° N, 122.6610° W
Portland, OR
A working vacuum store displays historic cleaners and a timeline of domestic vacuum technology, including machines dating back to the industry's early years.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums45.6542° N, 118.6631° W
Pendleton, OR
Operated by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the museum presents Plateau history and culture from Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla perspectives.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums44.5530° N, 119.6462° W
Kimberly, OR
The fossil-beds visitor center displays prehistoric mammals and plants while windows into the working paleontology laboratory show how specimens are prepared and studied.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums45.5179° N, 122.5997° W
Portland, OR
This small artist-run museum presents invented natural history, faux scientific specimens and elaborate assemblages from the imaginary 'Zymoglyphic' world; hours are limited.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed