D.C. Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery & Archives — Attraction in Spearfish

Such a cool FREE family experience! Easily one of our favorite stops in South Dakota! It's so fun feeding the fish (get the $5 bag, it's worth it). They have two scavenger hunts for the kids, one for the grounds and one for the museum. Kiddos get a free cup of fish food for each completed scavenger hunt. These kept my kids super engaged and they absorbed way more information than I expected!

A staff member on the deck chatted with us about the grounds and took a family picture for us. He was a fun dude, great way to start our visit!

We were going to skip the house tour, but I'm glad we didn't. Our tour guide was lovely and took the time to chat with us about the history and show the kids some cool features of the house. They were fascinated, and the house has been restored beautifully. We hope the third level is finished to tour when we return in a couple years!

The museum was interesting and well kept. The staff member at the entrance was eager to engage the kids and answer questions. Unfortunately, while we were watching the informative video, a group of teens or young adults took our $5 bag of food off the table behind me. My kids were horrified when we figured out what happened. We went back to the shop with their finished scavenger hunts and told the staff member at the register what had happened. I was just chatting while we got their cups of food for the scavenger hunts, but she immediately replaced the big bag of food at no charge when she heard. She definitely didn't have to do that but it made our visit that much more special.

We fed the big fish, the baby fish, and a super cute group of teenage geese. I can't even explain how delightful it is to feed them all LOL. Non-stop grinning from us all.

The only thing that we weren't able to do was go in the train car - it was closed that day. The kids liked looking in the windows and seeing the video in the museum on how it was used.

We made sure to pick out a couple treasures at the gift shop. So many fun fishy finds! My youngest got a trout stuffie, my middlest got a trout finger puppet, and my eldest picked out the Hatchery coloring page to color and hang on her wall.

Hands down favorite by all. We can't wait to...

I love this place! Its great family entertainment and its free!

Its one of the oldest fish hatcheries in the west. Its not very big, but its right next to city park so you can easily spend half a day in the area. There is a little gift shop and inside is an elevator. You can take the elevator down to an underwater viewing area of the fish if you have a stroller, or if not there are two sets of stairs. The underwater viewing area is definitely the best part of this place! There are so many large fish, and if you're little ones like fish they will love this! My son could easily spend all day here! You can buy fish food and feed the fish, which is so fun! They'll jump out of the water and swarm to get their food! Its so much fun for kids to feed and watch.

There is an old train car that was used to move fish on the railway, which is very cool. There is also a museum but its closed for work.

There is not RV parking available here, but not even half a mile up the road is a...

I visited today on a whim when I saw the sign on the main road of town and I had a fantastic time. They have a great set up, a beautiful area with fascinating history. I had a wonderful chat with a worker at the historic fish train car, he was very friendly and fun! I also had a great time chatting with the worker in the historic house. She was super sweet, very knowledgeable about the house and its history, and even let me talk her ear off about my own experiences interning at a museum with a house of a similar age. Seeing the fish from both above the water and below it was very cool, and the gift shop was lovely as well. I will totally be back next time I’m in town to hopefully see the new museum renovation! They are doing great work preserving history and ecology! Totally worth a visit if you are near the area, if you have kids or any interest in fish, fishing, history, etc or just want a pretty spot to walk around for a bit, especially as it’s...