The museum you pick around Sacramento should depend less on what you are interested in and more on how much of an afternoon you actually have to give it. That sounds like a small distinction. It is the one that decides whether you leave a place delighted or quietly checking the time.
The region has a strange spread of them. A serious art museum in a downtown mansion, a railroad museum that is genuinely one of the biggest in the country, and a one room soda works in Placerville that takes about as long to walk as it takes to park. Same word on the sign. Different commitment.
WHAT ACTUALLY DECIDES WHICH ONE YOU PICK
Almost nobody chooses a museum by subject. You choose it because you have three hours on a Saturday and somebody in the car has opinions. So the useful question is not art or history. It is whether you are standing in that building for ninety minutes or four hours, and whether the people with you will still be enjoying it at the end.
I sort them three ways: the ones that eat an entire afternoon, the ones that fit between other things, and the ones worth the drive on their own. A four hour museum is a bad second stop.
THE ONES THAT EAT A WHOLE AFTERNOON
Crocker Art Museum, downtown. The oldest art museum in the Western United States, and the building is half the reason, since the original wing is a 19th century Italianate mansion. The collection runs from California and Native American art to European masters to contemporary work. Give it a real block of time.
California State Railroad Museum, Old Sacramento. One of the largest railroad museums in the country, and the one I would send a visiting family to first. Restored steam locomotives, historic cars, and a train ride along the waterfront. If you have a small person in the group who is interested in trains, budget the day.
MOSAC, and the Aerospace Museum. The SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity is the hands on one, built for kids who need to touch things. The Aerospace Museum of California out at McClellan Park is the opposite kind of big: more than 40 historic aircraft across a four acre outdoor airpark. Both are half day minimums with children.
THE ONES THAT FIT BETWEEN OTHER THINGS
This is the category people underrate, and where most good days actually happen.
- Folsom Prison Museum. One of the state’s most notorious facilities, and the museum is essentially one collection, including memorabilia from Johnny Cash and his 1968 visit. Forty five minutes, and you are back in the historic district with your afternoon intact.
- Fountain and Tallman, Placerville. A soda works from the 1800s, on the National Register, small enough that the building is the exhibit. Excellent second stop.
- Bernhard Museum, Auburn. An old inn, winery and farmhouse restored as a Victorian home with period furnishings and a garden. Short, and a good counterweight to the gold rush material nearby.
- Dai Loy Museum, Locke. Built in 1916 as a gambling house in a town that is itself a designated Historic Landmark, built by and for Chinese immigrants who came to work the land. The Locke Boarding House Museum is a second short stop.
THE GOLD COUNTRY LOOP IS WORTH A DAY ON ITS OWN
Auburn and Placerville are close enough that the drive becomes part of the plan. Auburn carries three: the Gold Rush Museum, with a replica mining tunnel, a stamp mill and panning; the Placer County Museum in the old courthouse, which runs from the prehistoric record through the Gold Rush to the present; and Bernhard. Placerville has the El Dorado County Historical Museum, with mining tools, railroad equipment, wagons and a collection of Native American baskets, plus the soda works downtown. That is a full day without a stop that overstays.
THE ONES PEOPLE FORGET ARE MUSEUMS AT ALL
Two of the best in the region do not read as museums from the road.
Maidu Museum, Roseville. The Nisenan Maidu lived on that land for thousands of years. The site has trails with hundreds of bedrock mortars, petroglyphs, and native plants the people used for medicine. This is a museum where the exhibit is outside, which changes the pacing of a visit.
California Agriculture Museum, Woodland. More than 100 tractors and farm trucks, a blacksmith shop, a historic barn. If you have ever wondered why this region looks the way it does, this is the answer with wheels on it. And the California Automobile Museum holds more than 150 cars from the 1880s forward, and lets you ride in a vintage one on the third Sunday of the month.
THE COMPARISON I REACH FOR, AND WHERE IT STOPS WORKING
The closest ordinary thing I can think of is picking a hike off the American River Parkway. Nobody chooses a trail by what the plants are. You choose it by how far it is and how much climb is in it, because that decides whether the walk is a pleasure or a chore.
That gets you to the right instinct, and then it hands you off to a less pleasant list. It stops working because a trail has a fixed length and a museum does not. The building is the same size for everyone in it. What changes is whether you read the placards or walk past them, and whether the person beside you is nine years old.
WHAT I WOULD TELL YOU TO WEIGH
- The child calculation. A four year old gets about ninety minutes out of any museum, however good it is. That argues against the railroad museum as a first stop and makes MOSAC the obvious one.
- The parking and the walk. Old Sacramento and downtown are a walk apart. Auburn and Placerville are a drive apart. Two buildings in one district beats one building plus forty minutes of freeway.
- The one you already visited. Rotating exhibits change and permanent collections do not. If you are going back hoping for something new, check the calendar instead of the memory.
- The second stop problem. A one room museum is a lovely second stop and a punishing first one. Get the order right and a short museum reads as a bonus.
If the drive is the deciding factor, start with the neighborhood pages. Davis covers the Shrem Museum and what the campus end of town is like, Roseville covers the Maidu site and that side of the county, and the neighborhoods hub lists every area I work in.
Question for you: which museum around here have you walked into with no plan and stayed in far longer than you meant to? I am collecting those, because the good ones are almost never the ones people plan.
Adapted from Your Guide to Museums in Sacramento and Beyond: Art, History, Science and More, originally published by Windermere Signature Properties at windermerecalocal.com.
WHEN YOU ARE READY
Let’s talk about what you want in an area.
Send me the areas you are considering and what matters most to you. I will tell you what each one is actually like, including the parts that argue against it. Nothing is committed by asking.
