By editor
In Chinook, where the rolling prairies meet the Bear Paw Mountains, the Blaine County Museum sits on Indiana Street. The terrain here is mostly flat, cut by coulees and the Milk River. Beneath this landscape lies the Judith River Formation, seventy-five to eighty million years old. Edward Drinker Cope worked these exposures in the nineteenth century. The museum holds the fossils of hadrosaurs, Gorgosaurus, and ankylosaurs, alongside the massive marine reptiles that swam in the Western Interior Seaway.
Visitor Access
The museum is free to enter, though donations are appreciated. It operates on seasonal hours, open Monday through Saturday from April through September, with reduced weekday hours in the winter. Visitors can handle fossils of sea creatures and plants in a room specifically designed for touching, a rare tactile connection to the Cretaceous.