Skip to main content

Kenosha Public Museum

Kenosha Public Museum

Established in 1933, the Museum's collections have grown to over 70,000, including almost 1,000 works in the fine arts collection. Exhibit programming includes world cultures, Native Americans, zoology, geology, fossils, and fine and decorative arts.

The Wisconsin Story is an immersive experience placing the Museum collections in an exciting multi-disciplinary adventure. Visitors will experience the change in climate, the development of a variety of ecosystems, the evolution of plants and animals, and the life of Native Americans as it happened in our area over hundreds of thousands of years.

Highlights of the first floor exhibits include coral reefs and primitive monsters of the deep, the Ice Age and the eventual melting of glaciers, the Schaefer mammoth dig, the Hebior mammoth replica, and the story of Native Americans of Wisconsin.

The Schaefer mammoth, excavated by the Museum, is significant because it documents the earliest interaction of mammoth and man east of the Mississippi River. The actual Schaefer mammoth bones are set in a special floor display exactly as found on the Schaefer farm in Paris, Wisconsin. Further research on the Schaefer mammoth bones tells us that this site is one of the oldest sites of human habitation in all of the Americas.

The Hebior mammoth was excavated in Kenosha County, Wisconsin and is the largest, most complete mammoth excavated in North America. A life-size replica of the Hebior mammoth was purchased by the Friends of the Museums for this exhibit.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.