Eastern Museums in Utah
Castle Dale
• Emery County Pioneer Museum. A fully stocked mercantile has been recreated with items that early settlers might have purchased. A lawyers office, schoolroom, and typical pioneer home are authentically recreated. Another room displays tools of farmers, ranchers, and coal miners who helped settle the area. An art gallery features local artists. (435-381-5154)
• Museum of the San Rafael features a Paleontology Room with life-size dinosaurs which rotate on a central platform. All are dinosaurs that have been discovered in Emery County. Exhibits also consist of Indian culture of the San Rafael area and many valuable Indian artifacts. (435-381-5252)
Green River
• John Wesley Powell River History Museum. River Runners Hall of Fame commemorating men and women who have matched their wits against Utah rivers; includes fascinating replicas of the different kinds of boats used to explore the west’s waterways including a unique round hull boat used by the Indians, the primitive rafts used by early day river runners, and the boats and equipment used by present-day explorers and adventures. (435-564-3427)
Helper
• Western Mining and Railroad Museum. Gift shop, indoor displays and two outdoor locations that contain a 1917 railroad caboose and mining equipment that dates from early to modern times. (435-472-3009)
Jensen
• Dinosaur National Monument Quarry Visitor Center. In-situ exhibit of 1,600 dinosaur bones as they were deposited in a river 145,000,000 years ago; primarily self-guiding tours, and occasional talks given during summer season.
Price
• The College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum is filled with dinosaur exhibits, and displays relating to ancient Puebloan cultures. Impossible to miss is a reconstruction of a huge Colombian mammoth.
• The Mural in the Price Municipal Building depicts the history and industry of Carbon County. It was painted between 1938 and 1941 by Utah artist Lynn Fausett.
Vernal
• Utah Field House of Natural History State Park and Museum. Fifteen life-size replicas of prehistoric creatures line the paths of the dinosaur garden. The indoor museum has a large assortment of specimens in anthropology, natural history, geology and paleontology. The collection also features relics of prehistoric and recent Indian residents of the region, fine mineral exhibits, plants and wildlife, fossils, models and reconstructed skeletons of long-vanished species. (435-789-3799)
• Western Heritage Museum. Western artifacts; turn-of-the-century displays, including blacksmith shop, drug store, barber shop, country store, and machinery shop; Leo C. Thorne prehistoric and historic and Indian collection; gift shop; art exhibits; outdoor exhibit of horse-drawn vehicles from the 1800s to early 1900s.
For additional information on Utah Museums,
or a complete museum listing contact:
Utah Office of Museum Services
2 South 400 West
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
801-533-3247