Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium

Franklin Fairbanks belonged to a family whose platform scales, invented in St. Johnsbury, were sold worldwide and made the town wealthy. Like many wealthy Victorians, he was an avid collector, amassing natural specimens and oddities until he built a museum to hold them and gave it to the public.

The building itself, a Richardsonian Romanesque pile of red sandstone, is part of the experience, and its grand oak Great Hall remains one of the most beautiful museum interiors in New England. Walking in feels like stepping into the nineteenth century's idea of how to understand the world: by gathering it, labeling it, and putting it on display.

The collection ranges from Vermont's own birds and mammals to specimens from far corners of the globe: a polar bear, exotic birds, mounted big game, shells, minerals, and ethnographic objects. There are famous oddities too, including intricate pictures made entirely from mounted insects.

It is deliberately dense, a survival of the era before museums thinned their displays, and that abundance is the appeal. Children and adults alike find something startling in nearly every case.

The Fairbanks added a planetarium in the 1960s, and it remains the only public one in Vermont, projecting the night sky and seasonal star shows for audiences in a small domed theater. In a rural state with famously dark skies, it is a fitting complement to the real stars outside.

The museum is also home to the Eye on the Sky, a weather service whose forecasts are broadcast to listeners across northern New England, giving this small-town institution a daily voice far beyond its walls.

As an indoor destination, the Fairbanks welcomes visitors year-round and makes an ideal refuge on a cold or rainy day in the Northeast Kingdom. Planetarium shows run through the seasons on a set schedule.

Autumn brings foliage travelers to the Kingdom's back roads and fills St. Johnsbury, while winter, with its long dark nights, is a fine time for a star show followed by the real sky overhead.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.