Bismarck, ND: North Dakota Heritage Center

After our tour of the North Dakota Capitol Building, I asked our tour guide and the other staff members around if they had any recommendations for us to do around the area. They unanimously suggested we stop by the North Dakota Heritage Center, conveniently situated right next to the capitol building grounds. The website doesn't state anything about admission costs (only hours), but it is free.

We took a minute to switch the car into the other parking lot and saw a very cool building.








The museum is very well done, and we saw everything from dinosaurs to electric lights in our hour or two we spent inside.



We wandered from gallery to gallery - it's kind of designed in a wheel spoke shape, with entrances to galleries from the center of the building leading out and then meandering one direction or another.






Do you want to get a hug from a dinosaur skeleton?





I enjoyed the fossil section a lot. We visited the Indianapolis Children's Museum frequently when I was growing up, and my favorite exhibit was the one where you could unearth bones and fossils in a giant sandbox.




There was an entire exhibit dedicated to energy stuff. About this point the museum was overrun with a school field trip (who appeared to be doing some kind of scavenger hunt), but luckily there is actually a lot of open area for people to process things in. Usually museums feel too crowded and cramped, but this felt (almost too) open.


Later on we walked through the Early People exhibit. Besides fossils I really like Indian culture, and virtually all the museums we went to on this trip included some kind of Indian presence.







The last exhibit we went to (if I remember correctly, not all the exhibits were open yet last summer) was Yesterday & Today. This took us through history to the modern day.


The first exhibit was really well done. There are speakers above each area where you get to hear something relevant about that particular piece of history.





Of course I would stop and take a look at the old computing equipment.



There was a soda fountain and counter in this exhibit, and I wished that it was functional. If you've been reading this very long, you know that I love old fashioned soda fountains.



If you have some time to spare, the museum is well done (hands on, easy to read, spacious) and full of some interesting history. We enjoyed it as a nice unplanned stop on our trek through North Dakota.
Bismarck, ND: North Dakota Heritage Center Bismarck, ND: North Dakota Heritage Center Reviewed by Maria on 10:14:00 PM Rating: 5

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