3 Best Sights in The Willamette Valley and Wine Country, Oregon

Visitors are greeted by a resident taxidermy moose, Bruce, at this two-story museum, which showcases art, artifacts, and ephemera from Benton County and beyond in four different galleries. Highlights include a whimsical semipermanent exhibit that pairs hats with chairs from the same era, a display of inkwells from around the world, and all sorts of old-timey gadgets, from a vintage telephone switchboard to a massive Pontiac engine from 1929.  

This museum does a striking job at telling the story of Independence and its surrounding regions through the eyes of various communities that have contributed to its history, not just white settlers. You can see a recreation of an old general store stocked with vintage packaging, a lifelike blacksmithing display, and even a doctor's office where old-timey medicines and medical books are displayed. Kids love the skeleton of “Betsy the Cow,” used in local classrooms to teach anatomy since her bones were first discovered by a group of schoolchildren in the 1960s.

Relics on display are devoted to Pacific Northwest anthropology and the natural sciences. Highlights include the fossil collection of Thomas Condon, Oregon's first geologist, and a pair of 9,000-year-old sandals made of sagebrush.