Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals
Historic house in Oregon, United States / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals is a non-profit museum in Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. Located just north of the Sunset Highway on the northern edge of Hillsboro, the earth science museum is in the Portland metropolitan area. Opened in 1997, the museum's collections date to the 1930s with the museum housed in a home built to display the rock and mineral collections of the museum founders. The ranch-style home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the first of its kind listed in Oregon. In 2015 the museum became a Smithsonian Affiliate museum.
Established | 1996 |
---|---|
Location | Hillsboro, Oregon, U.S. |
Coordinates | 45.5744°N 122.9486°W / 45.5744; -122.9486 |
Type | Earth sciences |
Visitors | approx. 25,000 (2009) |
Director | Kimberly Vagner |
Curator | Angela Piller |
Website | ricenorthwestmuseum |
The museum sits on 23 wooded acres (9.3 ha), with the main building containing 7,500 square feet (700 m2) of space. Collections include petrified wood, various fossils, fluorescent minerals, meteorites, zeolites, and a variety of other minerals. With more than 20,000 specimens, the museum is the largest of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. The facility has around 25,000 visitors each year.