Leadville, Colorado: National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum

This is a great museum, and I'm not really into rocks or mining. We stopped by on a day too wet to go for a hike or bike ride, thinking it would be a good way to kill a half hour or so. We didn't have enough time to fully see everything; allow a few hours.

Tip: walk quickly through the first rooms of rock samples and save time for the mining exhibits in the back. They even have recreated some old deep shaft mining tunnels! There's also a really interesting room of how many minerals are used in our homes and daily living articles like soap and makeup.

A multi-level historic school house turned museum that is chock full of mining information, artifacts and stories. Leadville has a fairly well-preserved main street and the museum really caps off the feel of turning back the pages of time to what the mining towns of Colorado were like in their hey day. It has some great old framed Harper's Weekly pictures and articles that really explain how hard life was for miners, plus many examples of miner's equipment, but the highlights are the string of dioramas, the model town with railroad, and the walk-through tunnels that replicate the inside of mines.