Take a rainy day to step inside and back into history at Roseburg’s Douglas County Museum. Located right off Interstate 5 near the Douglas County Fairgrounds, the museum has something for the whole family to enjoy and is well worth a visit.
Home to the largest natural history exhibit, the Douglas County Museum is a gold mine of well-preserved artifacts and exhibits showcasing the rich stories and culture of local fur trappers, naturalists and explorers, eastern missionaries, gold prospectors, pioneer families, loggers, farmers, and fishermen.
In addition to having nearly 9,000 local artifacts on display including prehistoric spear points, woven baskets and family quilts brought over on the Oregon Trail, the museum houses the last standing depot of the Oregon and California Railroad.
The Douglas County Museum is also home to the Northwest’s most comprehensive plant collections in its research herbarium with nearly 3,000 cataloged specimens, and has Oregon’s second largest historic photograph collection with more than 24,000 images going back as early as the mid 19th century.
If that isn’t enough, children and adults alike will love the animal exhibits. Some favorite things to see are the full-size saber-toothed cat skeleton, a woolly mammoth skull and tusk, an American lion skull and an ancient bison skull.
The Douglas County Museum is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m.- 5 p.m. The museum staff recommends at least one to three hours for the complete tour. Admission is free for members and those who are ages 0-4. Students 5-17 are $2, adults are $8. Seniors and veterans are $5.
Through January 2023, visitors can also catch a traveling exhibit honoring the life of one of Oregon’s first African American pioneers, Letitia Carson. The new exhibit includes photographs, historic maps, newspaper articles, published works and other documentary evidence about Letitia Carson, her family and the Letitia Carson Legacy Project.
