Humboldt County Historical Museum - Dakota City, Iowa

Dakota City offers The Humboldt County Historical Museum complex to visitors so they can look at examples of historical buildings such as the Old Mill Farmhouse, a log cabin, a kettle shed, the Norway #6 country schoolhouse from east of Thor, the old Rutland jail, a chicken house from the Lu Verne area, a huge two-story barn from the Rutland area, and, at the back of the lot, the Hardy Methodist Church. A new building faces south and has an open entry, where a small selection of antiques are displayed.

In this building is some fire fighting equipment, with Sherman Silbaugh’s 1934 Diamond Reo fire engine sitting in the "main street" area down the center of the building.

The newest addition to The Humboldt County Historical Museum is a building which has vignettes (a set-aside scene) along the north and south sides of "main street" will be displays of a variety of shops, including a post office, doctor-dental displays, a printing office, a cobbler shop, a carpenter’s shop, a bank, antique cameras, Indian artifacts, and other collections that have been donated to the museum over the years; but some only occasionally put on display due to lack of space.

Each vignette will eventually have a "store front" look and the same pattern will be followed on the north side of the street.

Here one can learn more about Humboldt College. There are displays on Frank Gotch and Native Americans.

Admission is $3 for adults and from age 5 to 11 is fifty cents.

Directions – 2 ½ miles east on State Highway 169 in Dakota City, Iowa 50529

Hours: The museum opens for public tours the first week of June and will schedule special tours for schools and organizations. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the request that visitors plan to come early for the tour that takes approximately two hours.

Wednesday the museum is closed for cataloging and cleaning. Sunday hours are from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Volunteers are on hand to answer questions, but there are no formal guided tours on Sunday. Visitors can go through the house and then walk around the grounds and view the buildings and contents.

Phone – (515) 322-5280