Kenosha, WI: Kenosha Public Museums

The Dinosaur Discovery Museum, Kenosha Public Museum, and Civil War Museum are a suite of three modern museums that offer a wide variety of entertaining & educational activities to explore in the beautiful lakefront of Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Our son loved gazing at dinos at the Dinosaur Discovery Museum, my wife enjoyed learning about Native Americans at the Kenosha Public Museum, and I was really fascinated by the history conveyed at the Civil War Museum - needless to say we enjoyed all three on our recent visit to Kenosha!

The Kenosha Public Museum was amazing!

The Dinosaur Discovery Museum

We began our museum excursion with The Dinosaur Discovery Museum, which is located a few blocks from the lakefront of Lake Michigan and is FREE.  Housed in the old Kenosha Public Museum building, this museum is actually the only museum in North America with gallery focused specially on the evolution of the bird from non-aviation dinosaurs.  The main gallery is the highlight, including a series of large fossil displays, even a large T-Rex!  This was the first time our son has been to such a museum, so he was very excited!

Inside the main gallery at the Dinosaur Discovery Museum

Next we headed to the lakefront area and visited the Kenosha Public Museum, another FREE museum in Kenosha.  I was very surprised by the quality of this museum - I'd say it certainly competes with many large city museums! For example, it was far superior to my hometown Missouri History Museum (in St. Louis) which ironically just hosted a mammoth exhibit similar to what is on permanent display at the Kenosha Public Museum - Kenosha's blew away what we had in St. Louis!

The Kenosha Public Museum is a very modern museum with amazing views of Lake Michigan

It's a brand new facility and was quite impressive

The museum itself is in a brand new facility ideally located on Lake Michigan and directly next door to the Civil War Museum, which I found equally as impressive.  We began our tour of the Kenosha Public Museum with The Field Station, a large gallery dedicated to children's hands-on learning activities.  After playing with trains for far too long (we were suppose to be building a city) we moved on to erecting a sustainable house - an activity that was fun for our son but equally quite educational for dad!

Building a city at The Field Station

The Field Station also features many other hands-on activities for kids to explore such as arts & crafts, touching various dinosaur fossils, and plenty of reading areas.  The gallery was surrounded by built-in drawer units that kids could open themselves and explore various topics & learning toys, such as dinosaurs (each labeled with the name of the dino the toy represented).  Overall this was probably the best children's gallery I have visited in a natural history museum!

Learning about sustainable living by building a green home

The next gallery we explored was also the largest, called The Wisconsin Story.  This is an impressive exhibit covering the evolution of Wisconsin's natural history highlighted by two massive mammoth fossils, the Schaefer and the Hebior.  Both were found in Wisconsin, and the Hebior is actually the largest and most complete mammoth ever excavated in North America!

Mammoths!

The Wisconsin Story also covers Native American life in Wisconsin through a series of recreated settlements & living quarters, the ice age, and even the evolution of plant life - that may sound like a lot of ground to cover, but the exhibit is not only large, it is engaging throughout making for a very educational & entertaining experience.  This is an exhibit that I would expect to find in Chicago or New York, so I was pleasantly surprised to see such a high-quality modern exhibit in the far smaller Kenosha!      

Learning about Native American life in Wisconsin

After The Wisconsin Story we headed upstairs to visit several traveling exhibits: Sustainable Shelter & Home Run - Reggie Jackson and the Original 500 Club (no pictures allowed here, though it was an interesting sports memorabilia collection).  We started with Sustainable Shelter which was highly enlightening for me; I was really appalled at how energy use, waste, and household living has changed for the worst from 1950 to today.  Did you know the average home in 1950 had 3.4 people in a 1,000 sq ft house?  Today its 2.59 people for a 2,500 sq ft house!

Sustainable Shelter

We also learned about energy effect & sustainable building methods through a variety of recreated demos & artifacts on display.  Much of this exhibit gallery was interactive, providing entertainment for our toddler as well.  We've been to many sustainable living exhibits (my wife's line of work) and this one is the best I have seen!

Having fun while learning about living green

After spending several hours at the Kenosha Public Museum we headed to the Civil War Museum located directly next door on the Lake Michigan waterfront (admission is $7).  This is also a brand new and modern museum covering two levels of exhibits, though the primary exhibit is on the main level covering the entire Civil War from the view of the home front, the only such museum in the world to do so.  It is set-up in a fashion similar to several other big city museums I have visited recently (such as the history museums in Cincinnati & Oklahoma City) where entire towns have been recreated and exhibits are life size & interactive.

The Civil War Museum uses modern life-size exhibits

Also on the main level is a remembrance gallery covering every major war in United States history, complete with the typical uniform of that war (originals).  Upstairs we found several other smaller temporary exhibits, such as one covering Lincoln in the Movies featuring Lincoln movie memorabilia & toys, and art gallery with Civil War art from artist Keith Rocco, and a non-lending library complete with children;'s activities & books.  Our toddler did enjoy the Lincoln logs, coloring, puzzles and books in the library, which also had great views of the Kenosha lakefront.

Actual towns are re-created similar to what I find at many big city museums

There was even a train car...you'd sit next to each passenger and hear their story

Overall I have to say I was quite surprised by the quality of Kenosha's museums!  Kenosha is by no means a metropolis (Wikipedia calls it a "bedroom community") yet it has several museums that are of the quality I would expect of a big city.  And not only are they of that high quality, they have no crowds (yea!) & come with a very family-friendly atmosphere!

LEFT: Kenosha Public Museum RIGHT: Civil War Museum

Disclosure: Our family's visit to the Civil War Museum was provided by the Kenosha Area Convention & Visitors Bureau. The Kenosha Public Museum & Dinosaur Discovery Museum are both always free to the general public.  As always, all of my thoughts are my own, unbiased, opinions based on my first-hand experiences.