pioneer trails regional museum

We drove from Rapid City, SD to Bowman, ND just for a day. After reading the reviews, we decided to visit this museum. What a surprise to see such a nice museum. There were many wonderful displays. The kids loved the dinosaur exhibit. The adults loved the Native American exhibits. There was something for everyone to see! We spent about 2 hrs there and enjoyed every minute. The $3 admission was a bargain. The staff there were really friendly and suggested a local restaurant for us to try - Eats N Treats (great burgers).

Maybe this is a low budget museum, but there is a lot to read, behold, and contemplate here. The reading is in large print, quick to communicate yet educational. The photos and exhibits are well-chosen. The museum gave excellent historical context to towns in the sparsely populated lands we'd passed on the way, and a though-provoking presentation on how the American spirit had evolved. There was also a wall on the role of women. The visit got me thinking about how many of us Americans, in the 21st centuries, are lazy and interested in the external resources and solutions. Go, and pay thoughtful homage to the people who paved the way for future generations to feel drawn to dreams, journeys, sweat, and ongoing improvement.

Wow, I really didn't expect this in a small town like Bowman. There are a number of displays featuring the history of the area 1. The German-Hungarian settlers. 2. Cowboys and ranching 3. The sioux uprising/Indian Wars 4.Fossils including a full replica of a stegasaurus. 5. Frontier life and finally, 6. The members of the community who have served in the armed forces. The displays are fresh and modern and well put together. The young lady at the desk was knowledgable and helpful. The giftstore was great and had a large selection of books, possibly a couple hundred titles, though they didn't seem to be arranged with any order to them. This is certainly worth a stop. Give yourself at least an hour. Oh, and by the way, there is also a buffalo ranch just north of town. Good for a few pictures from the road.

We spent two hours looking at all the displays in this interesting museum. If you want to know about this area of North Dakota, this is the place. It was very educational to learn about the history of the cowboys, Indians, plants, wildlife, immigrant settlers, ranch life, cattle and sheep herding, paleontology, and geology. I really liked the display of barbed wire. Who knew there were so many kinds? This place is well worth a lengthy visit.

On a very hot day this was a good activity to do. We spent about half an hour there cause it was almost the closing hour when we got there. Could have stayed about 1 - 1,5 hrs but it's not very big. We were quite surprised that it was such a good museum! Nice and entertaining. Kids liked it, lots to see.

Having visited this museum several times over the years, I've come to appreciate it more and more, as it develops and improves. It's certainly one of the better local history museums on the northern plains. The PTRM is becoming well-known for its initiatives in paleontology, but I'm more interested in the historical exhibits. And in local museums, I think it's best to encounter an artifact person-to-object, rather than expecting interpretation. I'll give one example of many outstanding individual artifacts in the PTRM: the Chisholm Trail marker emplaced in North Dakota (originally at Scranton, now moved to the museum in Bowman). P. P. Ackley was a Texan with an overblown enthusiasm for the old Chisholm Trail, such that he put markers of it up and down the plains, including in places, such as western North Dakota, with no connection at all to the Chisholm Trail. The trail marker exhibited at the PTRM, then, is an artifact of popular enthusiasm for the romance of the range. The Ackley markers were the subject of an episode in the PBS series, History Detectives.

The museum is an okay place for a pit stop when going through Bowman. It has good exhibits, but is an overall small museum that will only take about 20 minutes to see everything. For the $3.00 admission though, it is a bargain.

We made a day trip from Rapid City, SD to travel north to see this museum. It was over 300 miles round trip. It was worth the trip. The museum is very well setup. Displays are very tastefully done - lots of old photos of pioneers and indians. Wonderful displays. We spent 1 1/2 hrs and enjoyed every minute - and it was only a $3 admission. Very friendly lady in charge answered questions and was kind enough to suggest a local restaurant to us (which was great - Jabr's Family Restaurant). Very much enjoyed this small but wonderful museum