The Sternberg Museum of Natural History  was our true destination in traveling to Hays. The newly-relocated museum, off campus from Ft. Hays State University, has been open in its new home for just over one year. 

The museum is named in tribute to the dedication and hard work of Charles H. Sternberg and his three sons, George F., Levi, and Charles M., who, in the first half of the 20th century, collected a fine display of fossils from Cretaceaous chalk, left after the dissipation of the Great Inland Sea. (Kansas was an ocean floor in prehistoric times.) 

Perhaps the museum's best-known specimen is a large Cretaceous fish that died with the well-preserved reamins of another, smaller fish in its stomach. George F., finder of this fossil, had been named curator of the natural history museum at Kansas State Normal School in Hays in 1928. He found and recovered this fossil in 1952, retired in 1962 and died in 1969.

The third floor of the museum is devoted to dioramas of prehistoric creatures that lived on land. A ramp to the second level displays facsimiles of prehistoric creatures that once lived in the Kansas sea. The second floor includes a model of George Sternberg uncovering his fossil fish, and the actual fossils retrieve by the Sternberg clan. Also on this level are stuffed animals and bones of animals from more recent times.There is an art gallery with changing exhibits. (The exhibit we saw was art made of recycled materials.) There is also an area of changing nature exhibits. (The one we saw was about Oil Spill Cleanup.)

The museum is fully accessible and includes a restaurant. There is an admission fee. Visit the Sternberg Museum site online.