To kick off our 2.5 weeks in North Dakota, we spent a few days in Dickinson, a city on the western side of the state. When researching things to do there, we saw that there was a complex with several museums, with the main one being the Badlands Dinosaur Museum.
It had decent reviews online, but I’ll admit – I wasn’t holding out much hope for it. A lot of people had talked down North Dakota on our road trip and Dickinson isn’t a particularly large city (population of ~25,000). With it being a museum in a small city and an entrance fee of only $6 for adults (and even less for children and seniors), how good could it be?
As it turns out, surprisingly great!
After paying the total of $12 for me and Shae, we headed through to the exhibits. My initial impression wasn’t amazing as it looked like a fairly small museum with, seemingly at first glance, not many dinosaur fossils.
It didn’t take long to get fascinated by the exhibits though. We worked our way around the rom counter-clockwise, so the first exhibits we came across were rocks, minerals, fossils, etc. I’m not someone who’s particularly into geology, but the numerous displays had all kinds of interesting things to look at.
Something that the Badlands Dinosaur Museum does particularly well is that it provides enough information about each of the items to be interesting, but not so much that you get overloaded with information as you walk around.
One of my favorite exhibits in this section were the polished eggs made from all kinds of materials including meteorites, amber, petrified wood, soapstone, fossilstone and even dinosaur bone.
Another interesting exhibit was one straight out of Jurassic Park.
Even shell fossils that’s aren’t normally too exciting to look at were fascinating.
From the smaller fossils we moved on to the larger fossils.
There was quite a sizeable collection of fossilized dinosaur eggs.
The most interesting exhibit of all though was this triceratops skull. It weighs about 1,500 lbs and dates back to the late Cretaceous period, so about 67 million years ago. It took 24 days to excavate in 1992 due to its size.
There were all kinds of other fossils….
…and even some mammoth hair.
For the children (or the child in you), there’s fossilized poop.
The Badlands Dinosaur Museum has some interactive exhibits too. The best was this augmented reality sandbox that, based on the divots in the sand, displays what the topography would look like on a map.
When you play around in the sand and create different mounds and divots, the augmented reality projector changes accordingly. It’s probably meant for kids, but it’s a fun activity for adults too!
In addition to the Badlands Dinosaur Museum, your admission includes the Joachim Regional History Museum year-round. The two museums are right next to each other, with a door leading through from one to the other. We didn’t have much time to check out the Joachim Regional History Museum, but I took a quick look and there seemed to be exhibits focused on North Dakota life over the last century or two.
If you visit between Memorial Day and Labor Day, your $6 entry ticket not only includes access to the Badlands Dinosaur Museum and Joachim Regional Museum, but also the Pioneer Machinery Hall and a guided tour of Prairie Outpost Park. That’s superb value and it’s well worth a visit if you’re in North Dakota to visit nearby Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
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