Dickinson County Heritage Center

If you know me you know I'm a sucker for a small town museum, and the Dickinson County Heritage Center does not disappoint. We came here because of the vintage carousel that they still operate, and ended up exploring the whole building and outside structures which really made it worth the small entrance fee to see. Let's start with the main building. When you walk in, it's an old small town museum, and it feels like it. I do think this place could benefit from some TLC in terms of updating it and breathing in some new life, but I will also say from working in the museum industry, that funding can be hard, and I felt like they did a really great job of keeping it running, clean, and accessible with what I can imagine are some limited resources. Once you pay, you can meander through the galleries which cover the history of Dickinson County, and feature some really interesting artifacts. Our favorite part of the main exhibits was the section on the introduction of the telephone and how it evolved over the years. For our four year old this was especially cool because they have some switch boards that are interactive, and you can even place a call to another phone in the museum. For a kid that has never seen a rotary phone before it was pretty magical, and honestly even for us adults who remember those days, it was cool to see how it worked and we spent a good amount of time in that area. Once you've had your fill of the inside museum you can venture outdoors and experience the old school carousel, and some historical buildings. The carousel was really cool. First of all it's the oldest known carousel to still be operational in existence. I mean, this may be a fact hard to track down and verify, but that's pretty impressive. Being built in 1901, it's crazy to be able to ride something so old and get a full experience that someone else would have had over 100 years ago. The old buildings were also pretty neat to explore and we enjoyed walking around and seeing what each one had to offer. Overall, this is a pretty cool stop for anyone who enjoys history.