Virginia Museum of Natural History
618 Mulberry Rd, Martinsville, VA
Martinsville, VA
The state's official natural history museum, where dinosaur skeletons, Ice Age bones, and Virginia's deep past fill a bright hall in the Piedmont foothills.
The Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville is the commonwealth's official natural history museum, a research institution and public gallery devoted to the natural world and to Virginia's own deep past. Its bright halls hold towering dinosaur skeletons, Ice Age fossils, minerals, and displays that trace the story of life across hundreds of millions of years, much of it recovered from Virginia soil.
Though it sits in a small southern Piedmont city, the museum carries real scientific weight, with curators who conduct original research and collections that document the state's ancient seas, swamps, and forests. For visitors, that means the fossils on display are not just impressive to look at, they are pieces of genuine discovery, and the museum's hands-on approach makes the long story of life accessible and vivid, especially for families.
What Guests Love
- Dinosaur skeletons and casts towering over the exhibit halls
- Real fossils from Virginia's own ancient seas, swamps, and Ice Age landscapes
- A hands-on, family-friendly approach to natural science and discovery
- Its role as the state's official research and natural history collection
Worth Knowing
- This is Virginia's official state natural history museum, with real research behind the displays
- The hands-on exhibits make it a strong stop for families with children
- Martinsville is a small city, easy to reach off the main routes through southern Virginia
- Traveling exhibits rotate through, so there is often something new alongside the permanent halls
Details
Martinsville, VA
Learn about Virginia Museum of Natural History
The state's museum of the natural world
Established as Virginia's official state natural history museum, the institution has a dual mission: to conduct scientific research and to share the natural world with the public. It grew from earlier collections and found its modern home in Martinsville, where a spacious building lets it display fossils, minerals, and habitat exhibits and house working research collections behind the scenes.
Being the state museum means its scientists study Virginia's geology, paleontology, and living ecosystems, and their findings shape what visitors see. The exhibits move across vast stretches of time, from ancient oceans and the age of dinosaurs to the Ice Age and the present, giving a sense of how the land that became Virginia changed again and again over deep time.
Dinosaurs, fossils, and deep time
The showstoppers are the dinosaurs, with mounted skeletons and casts that loom over the halls and never fail to draw a crowd. Around them the museum lays out the broader fossil record: creatures of ancient seas, plants and animals of long-vanished swamps, and the great mammals of the Ice Age, including remains recovered from Virginia itself.
Much of the collection tells specifically Virginian stories. The state has yielded fossils from prehistoric whales along its coastal plain to Ice Age creatures inland, and the museum uses these local finds to bring deep time close to home. It is one thing to see a dinosaur, and another to learn what walked, swam, and grew in the very ground beneath your feet millions of years ago.
Science you can get your hands into
The museum leans hard into hands-on learning, with interactive stations, discovery areas, and programs designed to let visitors, especially children, engage directly with fossils, minerals, and the methods scientists use. Rather than simply reading labels, young visitors can touch, sort, and investigate, turning a museum trip into a taste of real scientific work.
Beyond the permanent galleries, the museum hosts traveling exhibitions, special events, and educational programs, and its research staff sometimes bring current work and new finds into public view. This mix of permanent collection and changing programming keeps the museum lively and gives repeat visitors reason to return.
The southern Piedmont around it
Martinsville sits in Virginia's southern Piedmont, near the North Carolina border, in country that rises gradually toward the Blue Ridge to the west. The region has a distinctive heritage, long known for furniture-making and textiles and, famously, for the short-track racing at nearby Martinsville Speedway, one of the oldest tracks in stock car racing.
The setting makes the museum an easy anchor for a wider trip. The mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway lie a short drive west, the Smith River offers fishing and paddling nearby, and the small-city pace of Martinsville makes a relaxed base for exploring this quieter corner of Virginia.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Martinsville
Martinsville Speedway
About 6 miles
One of the oldest and shortest tracks in stock car racing, a fixture of the sport since the 1940s.
Smith River
About 3 miles
A cool tailwater river popular for trout fishing and paddling in the hills around Martinsville.
Philpott Lake
About 15 miles
A large reservoir in wooded hills west of town, with boating, swimming, and camping.
Blue Ridge Parkway
About 30 miles west, a 40 minute drive
The famous ridgetop scenic drive, with overlooks and trails in the mountains above the Piedmont.