Museum @ Black Hills Institute — Attraction in Hill City

We ended up here by accident really because we were visiting the area and using a South Dakota travel app. We decided to go in and we were going in blind. We didn't know anything about the museum, the history of those involved, or anything. We enjoyed the museum and my husband being a movie buff was intrigued to see the award behind the glass for the "Dinosaur 13" documentary. We noticed the movie at the check-out while we paid for the little science experiment we had selected and started talking to the ladies working the counter. We asked why they didn't have "Sue" there and they mentioned the drama behind the find and that it was all in the movie. We just completed the movie and it was terribly sad. I wish I would have known the truly gem of a place I was in at the time with I visited the Black Hills Institute. We hope to someday make it back with a new appreciation of what you have accomplished and been through. - Much support from your new friends in the Ozark Mountains...

I upgraded my review to a 3 but really a four or five star site to visit if you or a family likes dinosaurs! We visited the museum in 2021 and 2022 on our vacation and my son really liked it.

The reason for a 3 star rating is we tried to visit the museum in 2020, as my son is a dinosaur fanatic! He saw the museum on an episode of Brave Wilderness (Coyote Peterson show) and ever since then, he's wanted to go to this museum. So, the next summer we went to Rapid City for our vacation only to find out the Museum was closed due to Covid. Now it's my fault for not checking more sources, but there was nothing reported on their website that they were closed, just a hand written note on the front door saying closed due to Covid. It was quite a disappointment to drive all that way just to go to a Museum that was closed, it should a real lack of caring and poor customer service to not even bother to update their website to let people know they were closed for an extended...

This museum was the reason we vacationed in South Dakota. We're incredibly big fans of Peter from the Emmy award winning documentary Dinosaur 13 (if you haven't seen it you must!) In hindsight we should have planned this vacation outside of the "field season" as we would have loved to meet Peter, but he was in Montana excavating a raptor when we visited. His Twitter account is updated regularly if you want to plan your visit better than we did. This museum is the direct result of an extreme passion. The collection of fossils, dinosaur and other fossilized bones is breathtaking. We visited Sue in Chicago and were even more impressed with Stan. We would recommend a trip to the Museum of Geology BEFORE your visit here. Their collection of rocks, gems and minerals is better, but this museum is far superior in every other way. In my opinion it is also better than the Field Museum in Chicago and is the true home of Sue no matter what any...