Small museums are everywhere! In fact, there may be one just down the street from your home! They’re usually operated by one to three individuals with a passion for a very specific theme or era (some of them actually grew up in those eras)! For instance, when I visited the West Kern Oil Museum in January of 2013, the lady who gave me a tour had actually grown up among the oil derricks and had all sorts of neat stories to share about her childhood, derrick mechanics, and even some surprising folklore from the local Native American tribes!
Or there’s the Bigfoot Discovery Museum up in Felton, which Mike Rugg has operated for ten years, barely squeaking by on merchandise sales (Did I mention most small museums don’t charge admission?) as he pursues the hairy mystery of the north! I’ve chatted with Mike for hours; he has some incredible stories to tell and facts to share. I even got to visit some sites in the field with museum staff, just because I asked! You can’t get that at big museums!
Some places, like the Pacific Heritage Museum in San Francisco, showed me sights I hadn’t even sought out, like an amazing exhibit about Chinese-American students who had the opportunity to visit their grandparents’ villages in China! Plus, the fellow at the counter informed me that one of the walls of the museum was original, a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and that there were vintage silver dollars on display in the basement! So cool!
Oh, I guess I was supposed to discuss the dangers of small museums. Well, they can be dangerous if you’re in a hurry like I tend to be! This is because small museums are home to passionate people with a lot of knowledge that they badly want to share, at their own pace! That’s why it’s so important to block off time in your itinerary to really enjoy these small museums and the people who work so hard to keep them afloat. Every time I’ve stumbled into a museum on a landmark quest, I have received a wealth of information about these sites and special instruction on how to find other landmarks. I even found a missing plaque at the San Jacinto Museum that had been riddled with bullets and taken down!
The truth is, the real danger is toward the museums themselves! Every day, they face lack of funding, a shortage of volunteers, and especially apathy! It’s easy to say, “Well, most of them have government funding.” Some do, but if you look at the list of 70 California state parks on the fiscal chopping block back in 2012, 33% of them were museums or historical parks! In fact, the curator at the Weaverville Joss House told me that it the government’s plan to dismantle and store temple artifacts at McClellan Air Force Base would end up costing more in the long run than keeping the park open!
So many people are convinced that museums are boring and pay them no mind, but any museum can be made interesting, so long as you ask the questions of “why” and “how!” What makes small museums so special is that your questions will be answered directly with passion and without the crowds of big museums! So go find one on Google and swing by! Learn about the museum, the curator, and the history, then let me know what you discovered!