Crap, looks like I let ya’ll down. No photos. The museum is definitely worth a visit if you like history or engineering.
On the plus side it was a good visit and the car wasn’t broken into. We did spring for a parking garage a couple blocks away. The security check took 20 minutes to get through but was pretty painless, like the airport but you keep your shoes on. The staff were all friendly and appropriate.
Three complaints, one pretty minor.
The lighting could have been better, my eyes aren’t as good as they ever were. The Mountain Man exhibit was especially dark.
Second I really dislike the layout. Basically to see the exhibits in chronological order you have to keep crossing back and forth. For example
1 2
3 4
5 6
Between the numbers is the main hall and you have to cross back and forth to follow the story they layout in order.
Last, and I’ll admit this is very subjective, I’d rather they supplement their extensive collection of interactive videos with more written plagues, I’d rather just read a plaque as opposed to interacting with a computer. That said I’m not the target audience so I can’t hold it against them.
On the positive side the movie about the Arch is fascinating and well worth seeing. I didn’t know anything about the Arch before today and am floored at the skills it took to design and build it! It really is impressive.
Edit to add one other nit, they have an exhibit about the peace medals the US made for the Native Americans and go to lengths to describe how some of the images were inappropriate but even through they had examples of the medals displayed they didn’t display the “inappropriate” sides! On the plus side they haven’t taken down their plaque about Laura Ingalls Wilder, the lady that wrote Little House on the Prairie, I figured that would have been removed. I also learned that many of the wagons that went West in the 19th Century had odometers! I never knew that.