Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Way back on MLK Day, we headed up to Denver. The night before, we were watching the AFC Championship, and the broadcast showed some footage from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (aka dinosaurs). Mac thought it looked fun, and so did the majority of the Denver metro area. While we were there, the museum also had the International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes (which I’ll cover tomorrow). Aside from the crazy crowds, it was a really cool museum.

Address and Location

You’ll find the Denver Museum of Nature and Science at 2001 Colorado Boulevard in Denver, Colorado. It’s next to City Park and close to the Denver Zoo.

Cost

General admission for adults is $19.95 a person. Kids 3-18 are $14.95 each, and senior 65 and up at $16.95. They also offer discounted admission for service members. Special exhibits, the planetarium, and the Imax theater are separate.

What to do

The museum is really large and has three full floors of exhibitions. On the first floor is a replica mine with geological samples from across Colorado and the world. It was cool to see the amazing assortment of stones and minerals that are native to Colorado (which I apparently took no photos of…).

The second and third floors have large zoological dioramas. They have the last grizzly known in Colorado, and many of the specimens are from the early 20th century. True story: my dad had me convinced for years that jackalopes were real animals. 

Next to the special exhibit area (where Sherlock was), the museum has a small but very interesting mummy area. A lot of the items were purchased by wealthy Coloradans during the late 1800s / early 1900s on vacation.

We also checked out the dinosaur area. This exhibit is really oddly configured in that you have to up and down stairs to see all of the fossils. Pretty much all of the fossils are casts of original finds, but you can watch paleontologists work on casts and fossils in a lab.

We also ate lunch at the museum. They have a quick service deli counter and a full service hot cafeteria line. It was around $20 for both of us.