Hal Tyrrell Trailside Museum of Natural History

About this museum

There is something particularly magical about a natural history museum housed in a Victorian mansion - the sense that the natural world and the domestic world have interpenetrated, that owls and salamanders and the stories of glaciers belong here, in these rooms, as naturally as any human family ever did. The Hal Tyrrell Trailside Museum of Natural History at 738 Thatcher Avenue in River Forest, Illinois, achieves exactly that quality, set within the lush corridor of the Cook County Forest Preserves along the Des Plaines River.The museum's live animal program is its anchor: native Illinois species - owls, snakes, turtles, and other woodland and wetland residents - inhabit the building and its grounds, creating encounters that no static exhibit can replicate. Children who have spent time with a live great horned owl at the Trailside Museum tend to remember it for decades. Educational exhibits interpret the ecology, geology, and natural history of the river valley, and naturalist guides lead hikes through the surrounding forest preserve trails, translating what visitors see in the exhibits into what they can observe underfoot and overhead.The Victorian mansion setting enhances every aspect of the experience - the high ceilings, the generous windows, and the broad surrounding grounds create a sense of being in nature's own house rather than a clinical institutional space. The gardens on the property are themselves worth exploring, managed to support native plants and the wildlife they attract.The Trailside Museum is open on Saturdays from 9AM to 5PM; check with the Forest Preserves of Cook County at fpdcc.com for additional seasonal hours and programming. Admission is free. For families in the Chicago suburbs seeking an outdoor - focused, genuinely educational experience that costs nothing, the Trailside Museum is one of the western suburbs' finest discoveries.