The Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium
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The Fairbanks Museum was founded in 1889 by St. Johnsbury industrialist Franklin Fairbanks. Inside our classic Victorian building, you'll find a dazzling array of animals and artifacts, dolls and tools, shells and fossils, and much more! Take a trip through the cosmos in Vermont's only public planetarium, and see weather forecasts in the works in our Eye on the Sky Weather Gallery. A full calendar of events, workshops, lectures and field programs invites everyone to explore the nature of our world.
When Franklin Fairbanks opened the doors to this Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont over a century ago, he invited all of New England to see beyond the horizon by bringing exquisite examples of natural science and beautiful artifacts from around the world to his home town. His "cabinet of curiosities" grew to include our National Historic Register building, a triumph of Victorian architecture, the cornerstone of St. Johnsbury's Victorian Main Street. Inside, our collections include some 175,000 objects:
75,000 natural science specimens (mounted birds, mammals, reptiles and fish; insects; nests and eggs; shells; fossils; rocks and minerals; herbarium)
95,000 historical artifacts (tools; toys; dolls; textiles; weapons; archival photographs and documents)
5,000 ethnological items representing Oceania, the Near East, Africa, Egypt, Japan and native North America.
The only public planetarium in the state of Vermont opened in 1961 and continues to offer guided tours of the cosmos every week.
Our Eye on the Sky Weather Gallery explores the science behind understanding weather. Since 1981, meteorologists at the Museum have produced Eye on the Sky weather programming that is broadcast by Vemront Pulbic Radio.
