This museum is huge, and I had relatively few photos to try to explain how random and weird and fun it is. The most fun part for us is that there is a scavenger hunt of numbered exhibits, where you have to write down the one thing that doesn't fit in the exhibit. Like say, the dental office of Walter Cronkite's father, Dr Walter Cronkite, has been reassembled in the museum. You search and search until you notice that there is a BBQ grill brush among the dental tools. Things like that. If you get them all correct, you get a railroad stock certificate. It's for kids but that hasn't stopped us yet.
Patee House started out as a fancy hotel and later, Pony Express headquarters. Over the years it was a college, sanitarium, and factory before becoming a museum in 1963.
As a museum, it has what seems to be a million collections. To quote from their website, "...The museum also houses an 1877 railroad depot, stagecoach, cars, trucks, fire trucks, wagons, buggies and carriages, Jeeps, a racecar, horse-drawn hearses and a real gallows, a blacksmith shop, dressmaker's shop, model railroads, antique furniture and toys, a wing with Western art by artist George Warfel, and a wing designed to look like the Streets of Old St. Jo in the 1860s-1880s."
I realized now that I never got around to posting about this because I get into this spiral of being unable to organize the photos I have, while lamenting the photos I didn't take. I hope this random jumble of photos to follow convinces you that this is a place worth exploring.
You could easily spend a whole day here, and it's only $6 to get in! We have met people from St Joseph looking at us like we are nuts when we say how much we enjoyed visiting and how we can't wait to get back. Don't pay them any mind. There are sixteen museums within two miles of the Museum Hill Bed & Breakfast. If you can't find anything interesting in St Joe, you're doing it wrong.
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