Joplin History & Mineral Museum — Attraction in Joplin

Interesting place to go if you are in the area. Not a museum that I would travel to see. It is small but very interesting. It is 2 dollars per person. It is worth for the amount of things you will see. I believe that they will be opening a Titanic section and the entrance will increase to 3 dollars per person. The museum is divided into two seccions. One is a mining exhibition. This area is perfect for a History and Science class to view. The other is exhibition area is suposed to be about Joplin, Missouri's history. It really has more of "all over the place topics items and topics." There is a bit of everything. Also, the owner is a cat lover. He has an area with news papers written as if one of the cats is narrating. Also, there were a bunch of cat shaped bags (12 to be exact) around the upstairs exhibition area. I found it cute and unique because I like cats. (These were Christmas decorations that were still there). Probably not so cute if you are not a cat lover. The restrooms are at the very end of the two sides of the museum. The museum only has one parking for disability. The thing I do not like about this museum is that it seems like it does not have an elevator. (Unless there was one in a closed area) It is sad because there is a second floor area in the mining exhibition and it would have been in to go upstairs if I was still in...

Stopped here while on a family vacation. Cute little museum with a great collection of local mineral and crystal specimens mined in MO. They also have a collection of early Americana, again with a heavy focus on Joplin and the MO area. I think we spent about an hour here. With it's location in the park, it's a great activity to combine with something else for a fun day out. Since it's a smaller regional museum they obviously don't have the same size collection as the larger national Natural History Museums. We were already in Joplin for the day to do something else in the morning, and the museum was the perfect afternoon activity before driving back. They have bathrooms. The employees were friendly and happy to answer questions. Most of the museum collection is on the first floor. There is a second floor but it's much smaller than the downstairs, and there is no elevator. Most of the mining stuff is upstairs, and downstairs is the minerals and crystals and historical Americana collection. There were some things scattered around geared toward kids so that combined with the fact that it's small makes me think it's pretty...

Alright so the contents of this museum are indeed interesting. The reason I gave 3 stars is because half of this museum is stuck in 1947. The minerals and mining exhibit are very interesting and informative though at least half of the minerals on display have no information about them. The info cards are hand written. Is there no sign or print shop locally that could print something for the museum? Its time for the cards to be replaced as they are falling apart. Also its time to dust some ducts, 😝. The other half of the exhibit space about Joplin in general is also interesting. Not beimg from the area I learned a lot about its history. Again there could be some updates to the info cards. And the current D-day exhibit had nearly too much to read but an awesome display of things to show my son that his great grandfathers would have used during the war. So come be a patron (its cheap) buy something in the "gift shop" and help this little museum get some...