Moab Museum

The Moab Museum on Center Street is one of the most underused resources for families visiting the canyon country around Moab — a recently renovated museum that tells the story of this extraordinary landscape through geology, paleontology, Native American culture, and the surprisingly dramatic history of human settlement in this remote desert.

For families who want to understand what they're looking at when they stand at the edge of a canyon or walk past a dinosaur tracksite, the museum provides exactly that context. The geology exhibits explain how the Colorado Plateau formed over hundreds of millions of years, how the uranium boom shaped Moab in the 20th century, and how the Ancestral Puebloans and Ute people inhabited this landscape for thousands of years before European contact.

Dinosaur fossil exhibits are a natural hit with younger kids. Moab sits in one of the world's richest dinosaur fossil zones — the Morrison Formation — and the museum's paleontology section connects the fossils kids see at field sites like Mill Canyon to the larger story of life during the Jurassic period.

The museum is air-conditioned, which is a genuine practical benefit in a Moab summer when midday outdoor temperatures regularly exceed 100°F. A museum visit fits perfectly into a midday schedule while the worst heat passes outside.

Admission is modest — among the more affordable family activities in a town where most experiences carry significant price tags. The quality of the exhibits is high, having benefited from a significant renovation. It's worth more time than most visitors give it.