Shoshone Museum - The Little Museum with the Big Mammoth

The Little Museum with the Big Mammoth

Shoshone Museum - Mammoth

Local History

The pioneers of this area include the ‘49ers who first traveled through Death Valley and the many miners, prospectors, ladies of the evening, and other determined – and slightly crazy! – folks who came to settle this seemingly inhospitable land.

Our collection tells the stories of these early pioneers: The story of Shoshone, how Dad Fairbanks and Charles Brown seized the opportunity to turn this whistle stop on the T&T Railroad into a thriving desert town. The lives of the hardscrabble miners that lived in caves dug out of the mud hills – our Dublin Gulch. The tale of when “the Desert Went Dry” – how Prohibition looked in a land of little law enforcement. Of the many lives one wooden building can live in a land with few trees.

Our community extends beyond Shoshone, to Death Valley, Death Valley Junction, Tecopa Hot Springs and more. Our stories are interwoven, and all are told here at the Shoshone Museum!