Natural History Museum
The Museum of Natural History is one of the most interesting museums at the University of Kansas. It is located on Jayhawk Blvd. in Dyche Hall, named after Lewis Lindsay Dyche (1857-1915). The museum opened in 1903, added a north wing sixty years later, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The museum's first exhibit was L.L. Dyche's collection of stuffed animals, shown ten years earlier at the Colombian Exposition. Today, the museum has over 130 exhibits on four floors.
The first thing visitors see from the museum's main entrance on the fourth floor is a very large display called a panorama. This exhibit of North American plants and animals was L.L. Dyche's collection. On the same floor is a museum gift shop and an information desk where visitors can give a donation of $2 for adults and $1 for children. Down one floor is a large collection of fossils found in the Kansas area. In one display with a special ultraviolet light, visitors can see fluorescent (or glowing) minerals inside rocks and a mastodon tooth. On the fifth floor, visitors can learn about North American Indians. Going up one more floor, visitors can see a working beehive, live snakes, stuffed fish and birds, and many other displays of Kansas plants and animals.