Museums

Rainbow Forest Museum

Historic 1931 National Park Service building at the heart of Rainbow Forest in Petrified Forest National Park.

Petrified Forest, AZ

About Rainbow Forest Museum

Rainbow Forest Museum sits in the Rainbow Forest area, which the National Park Service describes as the core of the original Petrified Forest protected by President Roosevelt in 1906. The museum began as the park headquarters, built in 1931 under the direction of the Chief Landscape Architect. Its construction was recorded in superintendent reports from that year, and the building was admired by visitors and officials at the time. Its exhibit room opened to the first visitors in late December 1931.

#national park
#historic building
#petrified wood
#1930s architecture
#Arizona

What's around here?

The closest stops to Rainbow Forest Museum, ordered by straight-line distance.

Sightseeing
Agate House Pueblo
Under $25
A partly rebuilt eight-room Ancestral Puebloan dwelling in Petrified Forest National Park, constructed largely from petrified wood.
0.7 mi awaySwitch it up: Sightseeing
Sports & Outdoors
Iconic
Petrified Forest National Park
$25–$50
Drive 28 miles past Painted Desert badlands and walk among fossil logs from the Late Triassic.
18 mi awaySwitch it up: Sports & Outdoors
Sightseeing
Painted Desert Inn
Check prices
A stone inn inside Petrified Forest National Park, built from petrified wood and later rebuilt in Pueblo Revival style.
19 mi awaySwitch it up: Sightseeing
Sightseeing
Homolovi State Park
Under $25
An Arizona state park just north of Winslow that protects hundreds of ancestral Hopi and Puebloan archaeological sites.
46 mi awaySwitch it up: Sightseeing
Attractions
Iconic
Meteor Crater
$25–$50
A 50,000-year-old, nearly mile-wide meteorite impact crater near Winslow with rim tours and a space museum.
48 mi awaySwitch it up: Attractions
Sightseeing
Quirky Fun
Standin' on the Corner Park
No admission fee
Pose beside a bronze troubadour, a red flatbed Ford and a two-story mural on the Route 66 corner from the Eagles song.
Transit: reachable by public transit
49 mi awaySwitch it up: Sightseeing