Lauren Ducommun

On our road trip out through west Texas to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, our family stopped at The Whiteside Museum of Natural History to check out their dinosaur exhibit! Located about 2.5 hours outside of Fort Worth, is a small community museum “specializing in the education of the public regarding natural history”.

We enjoyed the murals covering the outside of the Whiteside Museum and the dinosaur statue out front. Upon entry, we paid our tickets — it’s $7 per child and $10 per adult (but free for college students! Yay!). This ended up being the most expensive activity on our whole roadtrip.

The first room had a few replicas of tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops, along with a few dinosaur bones. But after that, the rest of the exhibits were a lot of taxidermy animals of every kind. There was an exhibit of animals found in Texas, as well as animals found in Africa. The back corner room was dimly lit and contained a few lizards.

To be honest, it was a little disappointing, as we could have walked through the entire museum in a few minutes. I was so glad I had a college student ID, and that we only had to pay $14 instead of $24. But even then, I wish we had saved our money to gone to Cabela’s. It seems like some of their exhibits were under construction, but as we were hoping to see fossils–and real fossils not just replicas–it was a let down.

If you are driving through Seymour, it’s worth swinging by to see the murals outside, but unless you are looking for an air conditioned place to beat the heat, it may be better to save your money for a bigger museum.