Exhibitions

Permanent exhibitions at the Western Center highlight the discoveries at the Diamond Valley Lake site that range in age from 230,000 years ago to the present.

Nearly one million paleontological specimens and archaeological artifacts found at more than 337 prehistoric sites form the core of the collection.  A sampling of these are on exhibition in the permanent galleries.

Your experience at the Museum includes . . .

 photo by Jim Watters, Sr.

       The Life on Earth Timeline 

       Walk along the 156 foot open-air corridor from the
       parking lot to the museum lobby entrance.  The 
       overhead time rings guide you through the    
       geologic time periods.

       Begin with the Pre-Cambrian and travel to the
       Holocene, the time period in which our mammoths
       and mastodons lived.  The distance you walk from
       ring to ring is directly proportional to the amount
       of time that passed from one geologic period to
       the next.

 

 photo by Jim Watters, Sr.

     Postcards from the Past
 
     Learn about a typical 1880s
     house in the Diamond
     Valley region.  

     Travel farther back in time
     with the artifacts created
     and used by the earlier
     Native American residents.
 

Movies in the Theater                                                                                          photo by Jim Watters, Sr.
                                                            
Two short films are shown regularly in our circular, immersion theater with its 270-degree screen.

Enjoy the animated Echoes of the Past, which transports viewers to a time when giant creatures roamed the area.  The informative, ten-minute documentary, Discovery and Recovery provides an eyewitness view of the excavation at Diamond Valley Lake.
 

In the Temporary Exhibition Hall....