Dickson Mounds Museum, Illinois, United States

4mrmattkoster 5:00 PM Mar 22, 2017

Much more than I expected
I expected this to be a tiny, local museum; in truth it does focus on the local, central Illinois natives but has stuff regarding cultures from across North America. It's a three story building where you start at the top and it put everything in chronological order for you as you work you way back down to the first floor which I thought was a really neat set up. The third floor includes an observation area where you can go outside and see where the various settlements and such were located on the horizon. There was also a short video that plays in a theater on the top floor. The majority of the exhibits and artifacts were on the second floor including a small recreation of a village and full sized dug out canoe. There was areas you could walk around outside although it was a bit chilly when I went so I passed on that and can't really speak to the quality of that. You can tell that of is an older building, lots of areas could use a coat of paint or better lighting. I don't think it detracts from the experience though. There was plenty of parking available. It was also free to get in which was a nice surprise. It was certainly very informative; lots of information given to you. It is not very interactive, lots of standing & looking/watching/reading. It took up a whole afternoon to get through it all, we were there maybe three hours and probably could have spent a bit more time had we wanted to or gone outside. Disclaimer: I am a history teacher so I may have found this place more interesting than your average person would.

3Cello12345 5:00 PM Nov 11, 2022

No mounds?
The museum is a beautiful and impressive building, located on a bluff overlooking the Illinois River valley. To do the tour, you start on the top floor and work your way down. The top floor has an awesome deck where (if it were not closed for repair) you could get an excellent view of not only the river valley but also (I'm told) a mound that is on private property. Unfortunately, the museum appears to have fallen on hard times, and represents simply a monument to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Many of the displays have been gutted, with posted paper signs explaining that after consultation with affected tribes, the items were no longer on display. No effort has been made to revise the exhibits to make full use of the space. Another big disappointment is that there are apparently NO MOUNDS on the site...at least none labeled. There are some nice walking trails in the woods, with a few laminated paper signs explaining native uses of some of the plant materials - we enjoyed this part. But wow, for a place with "mounds" in the name to have no mounds to visit was a big surprise.