National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum — Attraction in Leadville

I went as part of a group of 10 adults. We stayed for 3 hours & all enjoyed the museum. While we were there, a school group was also there, which made the 3rd floor a noisy place for awhile.

The first entrance we tried was locked & it confused us because it was 45 minutes after the museum should have opened for the day. Turns out that's the summer entrance. The non-summer entrance is on one end of the building. While inside the museum, I witnessed several other visitors trying to access the building using the "summer entrance", I'm not sure why they can't use the same entrance year-round? I guess it's probably because the gift shop is located next to the non-summer entrance ticket desk?

Exhibits included information about the Ice Palace (only lasted a few months before melting, you can visit the park where it was located- it is behind the museum), Climax Mine (about 15 minutes away), mining safety gear, and the Tabors. The 3rd floor had an interesting assortment of exhibits: a model railroad (it was out of order, but I'm guessing when it works the train runs around the tracks), a model of the Ice Palace, approximately 20 dioramas, a mock mine tunnel, a coin with a panda on it, pictures of some kind of currency (we think it was a company town thing), and information about minerals that are in common household products. The flourescent minerals on the 1st floor were really neat! There were also some exhibits that played short films & there was an exhibit that talked about mining in space.

We did find the Hall of Fame to not be of much interest, and the members of the Hall of Fame were almost all Caucasian men from what we could tell.

There is a library on the 5th floor, which is locked unless you have an appointment, which is unfortunate because there were some absolutely beautiful stained glass windows that I would have loved to have gotten a better view of. There's also beautiful stained glass windows on the 4th floor landing where the patio door is. The patio door apparently gets stuck sometimes because there was a sign up with a number to call if you couldn't get the door to open up to get back inside.

A week before our visit I called to find out if we needed to do anything special because we were coming as a group, I was told no & that I could go ahead and buy tickets online- there was no mention that I could do it in person on the day of my visit. I then proceeded to buy the tickets online- I recommend that you do not because the woman at the ticket desk was very confused by my having already purchased tickets. When you buy online you also have to pay additional fees & my group that I was booking for has tax-exempt status but there was no indication online of how this could be accomodated so we ended up paying the tax. Also, we'd bought tickets for 4 other group members who ended up not being able to go because they didn't feel well, I emailed (on Monday) to find out if we could get a refund (our visit was Tuesday), but never received a response (it's now Friday). It was within 24 hours of our visit, but a previous email mentioned that refunds are possible due to "unforseen circumstances," so I thought I'd give it a chance.

The elevator was broken when we were there, so the museum was not handicap accessible. I don't know if the elevator is usually out of order or if this was just a rare event.

There is a gift shop next to the ticket desk on the 1st floor.

Apparently the building used to be a school.

There are a couple of picnic tables out front that you can eat at. There's no food or drinks allowed inside the museum. You also cannot bring...

All museums curate exhibits to tell some sort of story, but keep in mind that this one has a very specific mining industry sponsored point of view; looking through other reviews, that seems to be a missing important point, so I want to focus on adding that information in this review.

The industry sponsorship is neither a bad or good thing: it's just a different model of conservatorship. If anything, I'm glad to see industry investment in education and historical preservation. But, there's a clear pro-status-quo thesis here in favor of current state of the mining industry to be aware of in order to properly take in the exhibits with a grain of salt (pun intended!)

The messaging comes across in two specific areas: attempting to counteract negative narratives about mining, and elevating the importance of mineral raw materials. These points are presented with varying degrees of complexity and success.

One of my favorite displays tracked the evolution of mineshaft lighting over time, from open burning oil lamps, to safety lamps that protected against igniting methane, to modern electric lighting. The underlying story is that "mining is safer than ever", and it was a great exemplar to explore that gradual change. On a less successful note, several exhibits point to how mining is now "ecologically friendly", with regulations in place for end-of-life mining sites to implement ecological revitalization plans. This seems much more propagandistic, ignoring the implicit tradeoffs from both the pro-environment side (not examining ecological damage during the active lifecycle of a mine) and anti-regulatory sides (ignoring the anticompetitive effects of regulation on new entrants to the market). I have to imagine a less pro-industry exhibit would include a more honest examination of the tradeoffs implicit in mining.

The constant "mining is important" message also came off as more doctrinal than honest. There were some pretty cringe worthy exhibits promoting this message: "Everything is made from something!" proclaims one room advocating for general growth in mining activity to meet rising demand for raw materials. This message glosses over the complexity of broader market dynamics, where rising demand for finished goods can not only be met by increasing consumption of raw materials, but also by improving technology to use inputs more efficiently, substituting different inputs, etc. Especially with the recent financial underperformance of many metals and mining stocks, the messaging about the economics of mining seemed at best naive, and at worst anti-market and pro-incumbant.

Overall this is a huge museum with fantastic mineral collection and interesting historical information on mining in Colorado, and is well worth admission and a couple of hours. Go in with an understanding of the curation bias and moderate dose of skepticism and it can be a great...

A really enjoyable visit. So much information is presented in the displays. I could've stayed all day and still not consumed all of the information presented. And it's nice that you can get very close to many of the artifacts. I learned quite a bit. Even the history of the evolution of the mining lamp is presented in an entertaining fashion. And the building is also quite interesting, being the old high school for the town. Being from Michigan, I especially enjoyed the detailed exhibit about the Wills St. Claire automobile and its extensive use of high-strength molybdenum steel, with the molybdenum mostly coming from the nearby Climax Molybdenum Mine. They even have a Wills St. Claire car on display! More than worth the price of admission - I...