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Cave City, Kentucky: Mammoth Cave Wildlife Museum

All of the wildlife is dead, which makes it much easier to observe. In a 14,000 sq. ft. "cave-like" building with over 1,600 specimens, most dating from its opening in 1969. Worth it just for the beetle with a human face, and the taxidermied lobster.

Address:
409 E. Happy Valley St., Cave City, KY
Directions:
One-half mile east of I-65 on Hwy 90, next to the Sahara Steak House.
Phone:
270-773-2255
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Visitor Tips and News About Mammoth Cave Wildlife Museum

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Deer exhibit.

Mammoth Cave Wildlife Museum

Amazing taxidermy, great faux backdrops, very campy and really fun.

[KentuckYeti, 07/31/2010]

Squirrel diorama -- some stuffed, some painted on the wall.

Mammoth Cave Wildlife Museum

The Mammoth Cave Wildlife Museum is worth a stop amid the caves and concrete wigwams in Cave City, despite its boring name. Their brochure is ambiguous about whether the wildlife you will see in the attraction, which dates to the late sixties, is alive or dead.

Fortunately for fans of Roadside America, they're all very dead and stuffed "in their natural environments!" (presumably fluorescent-light niches with plastic plants). The whole place smells like mothballs, with a weird stucco faux-cave interior.

Especially good exhibits include a beetle with a human face, a polar bear "shot by an eskimo" and a big taxidermied lobster proudly provenanced to the local Kroger supermarket. In what I think is irony, some of the dead moths on display are literally moth-eaten, crumbling to dust in the glass cases.

[Steve Archer, 05/21/2007]

We agree, this place is satisfying in that throwback wildlife museum way....


Nearby Offbeat Places

Crystal Onyx CaveCrystal Onyx Cave, Cave City, KY - 1 mi.
Dinosaur WorldDinosaur World, Cave City, KY - 1 mi.
Wigwam Village Motel No. 2Wigwam Village Motel No. 2, Cave City, KY - 2 mi.
In the region:
Memorial to America's Worst Drunk Driving Accident, Radcliff, KY - 48 mi.

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