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La Brea Tar Pits / Page Museum
Rating Details »
Categories: Museums, Landmarks & Historical Buildings, Local Flavor [Edit]
Neighborhood: Mid-City West5801 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 934-7243
- Hours:
Mon-Fri. 9:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Sat-Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
146 reviews for La Brea Tar Pits / Page Museum
We take people who visit us here.. they are always excited by the tar and the mammoth that appears to be moving while he sinks. My mom was upset because my boyfriend touched the tar. You see, some tar is randomly bubbling up in the grass here and there. The museum inside isn't much to look at. I guess I expect bigger and better things coming from the dinosaur exhibit in NYC's Museum of Natural History. Don't pay to get in here- even if it's only $7. My mom paid for me and I still felt bad. I laughed a lot because someone threw lots of garbage into one of the mini tar pits outside, including a tampon, a bag of chips, and some other goodies.
When I read below La Brea just means tar it made me laugh. I like the Tar Tar Pits. But I wouldn't "make a day" out of it. I mean, it's tar. I'll admit, my biggest draw to visiting this place was Encino Man, which I saw in the movie theater as a kid.
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Finally visited this place a few weeks ago...and totally forgot to Yelp about it...uh, that usually means it didn't leave a GREAT impression right?
Went with the 'rents and a family friend...none of us have ever been. I was super excited about goin' since I've never been and I can be a museum freak at times.....
The weekend we went it was close to a hundred degrees out, fail!!! Ugh, also horrible! Because it was so hot, the museum canceled the outside tour they usually have...uh, ok then. So we got to walk around ourselves and look at the exhibits. Not too much going on if you don't get to go on the tour....we were in and out in less than an hour.
I'm guessing this place is usually better and will leave a bigger impression if you get to take the outside tour. Without it, this place sort of fails in my book. Still an interesting place to visit once in your life...but not sure I'd recommend it or ever go back....
On the bright side, they offer senior and student discounts. Thank God I still have my student ID from college still in my wallet even though I've been out for a year and a half....I got in for less than 10 bucks, score!!!
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For 5+ years I have passed by this sign on Hwy 10 that says La Brea Tar Pits which according to Jeremy K. it means "Tar Tar Pits". I really wondered what going there is like. I finally went and was a bit underwhelmed.
The area is nice but you get to see tar and it's not even all bubbly. You smell the tar alright but do you really want to smell fresh asphalt? It is really something you should see once... (or never) and never come back again.
One thing that was somewhat neat is that there is some sort of mechanical mammoth that turned slowly that made it look like it was sinking into the tar/water combo.
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I liked it. This is the first time I've checked it out. It was neat to see everything that on display and the short 10-minutes features they have that covers background and what they do. Admission is reasonable and you can see everything within a couple hours. That being said, once you've seen everything, unless you are REALLY drawn in by this and enjoy watching the team clean and working over the recovered fossils, its not worth seeing a second time, only b/c you CAN see everything in 1 visit.
Overall, this is something very unique you won't find in Chicago or the Midwest, for that matter, so it is definitely worth a visit.
It's ponds of liquid asphalt that probably have looked about the same for 50,000 years, except for the animal models and the railings. I couldn't find Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Maybe they're inside the museum that I didn't visit.
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How neat-OH!
I was surprised we could see the park/tar pits for free. You can park for free on the east/west street just north of the Park/Tar pits.
You can smell the tar, there are restrooms and pop (SODA) machines that take credit cards (great, cuz I didn't have any coins).
The real treasure was the museum. $7 admission and it was very neat for a nerd like me. I discovered that North America had camels, lions, and there's a wall with 100 or more Dire Wolf skulls! There's a giant mammoth, a lab where volunteers are piecing together the bones of North America's past, and a little shop at the end.
The atmosphere of the park is very relaxing too. I think this would be a nice place to take my kids once a week (if I had kids). As a park alone, the place is worth visiting.
I thought it would be lame because the Tar Pits were in Last Action Hero but I'm so glad I had the opportunity to check this place out from San Diego. Fun!
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I had always wondered what "La Brea" meant and never bothered to look it up. And when I heard of the Tar Pit museum that's when I finally found out that it meant "tar". Just like what the name, the museum revolves around it. It's basically the world's largest bone remains collected from ancient tar pits where animals got trapped and eventually died. The thick tar would then preserve these remains for thousands of years until the scientists over at the museum dug them out.
The museum is old and feels like it. It's very tacky but it will please most kids easily. It feels like it needs a refreshing update though, really. Overall it's not bad but it could have been better. Even the movies are a tad too long but some people might find that charming.
Was it worth it? Yes it was, especially the part where you see the scientists who work for the museum work through windows that look right into their workspace. Would I do it again? Doubtfully, especially since it had little or no air conditioning.
Oh man, was this fun! The crazy thing is that the Page feels like it hasn't been updated since the early 80's but all the displays still work/look great! Like, the mechanical sabre-toothed cat eating sloth display still works as great as it probably did when Reagan was president. Highly recommend!
Not 5 stars because the designs and graphics of several exhibits need a freshening up.
I'd read about the famous La Brea Tar Pits since I was child. So I was pretty excited to visit the site and the museum.
This museum comes across as a bit outdated as to its techniques of presentation and is in need of some freshening of its exhibits. The skeletons and their presentations are impressive and worth seeing in their own right.
There are three things that struck me during my visit:
* The information shown in the exhibits' graphics emphasize the implication that human activity was the primary cause of the extinction of the large animal species of North America. But the nature of the evidence for this implied assertion isn't presented. I have since sought out discussions of what the evidence might be, and it seems this assertion is still controversial among the relevant scientists.
* The exhibit showing a representative "cube" of tar packed with a bewildering confusion of bones taken from one of the pits shows (1) how very many animals perished at the site and (2) how close to impossible it must be to assemble the complete skeleton of a given animal. My hat is off to the assemblers.
* Outside the museum there are open tar pits that are currently being "worked" by staff. The stench and filthiness of the work was striking.
I've written reviews of a number of unique travel destinations in the Los Angeles area. Find them here: http://www.examiner.co...
There's something wickedly fun about the tar pits.
Hell, just driving by on Wilshire will more than likely give you a good smell of that tar. It'll take you back to the days when your dad was re-doing the roof or when the road construction crew fixes up the pavement. Smell that? That's a death trap!
Weekends are often packed with families and kids. I should know, I was one of those little crumb crunchers that would always be here with his parents as a pretty cheap and enjoyable weekend outing. Nevermind the smell. The fact that my beloved dinos were down there.. being turned into fuel made me sad...
But then I thought how wicked awesome that whole idea was. My dino toys (but in real life) were all dead down there. Sick awesome!
It's one of those staples that you just need to go see. If not for anything more than understanding why the roads around the place are all slightly sleek as the tar pits spew over onto the streets.
Def. hit this place up on the weekdays. You'll regret it if you decide to go on a weekend and you can't take/stand wild children. Please don't throw them into the tar pits either.
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Nerd love. This place is so cool. Let me say that again: SO. COOL.
The fake elephant slowly drowning in a lake of tar is a favorite, and despite the fences, the tar bubbles up where it feels like it, so you can get a nice footful (or fingerful) pretty much anywhere. Stop and admire the fenced-off place where the parking lot is un-useable, due to ... asphalt ... beneath the asphalt.
I particularly recommend the snarky FAQ whiteboard inside the structure at the excavation pit: "What smell?"
If you read the signs in a condescending Valley Girl voice, it gets even better. "Why are there no dinosaurs in the Tar Pits?" "Los Angeles was, like, under water until, like, 100,000 years ago. The dinosaurs, like, totally died out around 35 million years ago. Like, million. Like, orders of magnitude. Duh."
Serious recommendations:
1) You can park for two hours for free on 6th. (And honestly, the LAPD is probably too poor to pay for chalk to mark your tires, so you can probably park for longer.)
2) Go on a weekday and avoid the mobs of children, unless you're into that sort of thing.
3) Do LACMA at the same time. Duh.
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I found myself strolling the block while killing time waiting for the LACMA to open. Buses of schoolchildren wandered around the LACMA-adjacent park and it wasn't until I came face-to-face with the fenced-in faux elephants, the smell of tar hanging thick in the air, that I turned to my sister and said, "where are we?"
"The La Brea Tar Pits," she replied.
"What?!" I replied, in shock. These were not the La Brea tar pits of my childhood imagination. Disney documentaries had built the idea in my head of an expanse of land (and, admittedly, sand), tar bubbling up to the surface, NOT awkwardly fenced-in areas of wild grass, with prehistoric animals "roaming" through puddles of black goop that could have been left by an overzealous SUV owner at a gas station. At the very least I expected the tar pits not to be in the middle of downtown LA.
We wandered into a "real tar pit" being excavated, and I gawked at the excavation set-up, trying to discern the animal skeletons via the colored flags and helpful signs. I was a little disappointed to note the layer of dust on all the equipment and signs indicating that the excavation had not seen much action since the previous year.
Had I not had such grand ideas of what the La Brea tar pits might look like and also time to visit the Page Museum I might have come away with a better appreciation for the tar pits as a whole. I can see the visit being appropriate for families, small children, etc. but if you have reached some legal age and not yet visited you are not missing much.
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This place was pretty cool considering I have never seen a tar pit before. Its located next to a few museums which are free on a certain days. Its inside of a little park which has nicely manicured lawns. You can see the bubbles of gas coming out of the tar ponds, which are enclosed in a fenced in area. I wish there were signs or something that told you of the history of the place and why there was still tar there, how much is underground, etc. But overall, I really liked this place and would consider taking a newbie there.
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I don't know what I was expecting but I was totally underwhelmed. It was cool to see some of the things they have recovered but I feel like I've seen those in museums before.
The exterior is infinitely better than the interior (save the money there's nothing in there worth it).
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The inner nerd in my has been secretly wanting to visit this place since I was a kid. I was able to bring my own rugrats on our latest trip to the LA area. We were able to get metered street parking right before the entrance gate so that helped with the little ones not having to walk too far.
We went on a Thursday afternoon and the park itself was really nice, not too crowded at all. The outside exhibit consists of a tar pit (small lake) and water from an underground source. It omits methane gas so be weary of that for those who are sensitive to certain odors/smells. It's actually pretty cool to see the gas surface and bubble. The kids loved it. It was a hot day so we didn't stay outside too long.
The Page Museum was a little more crowded with Day Camp attendees but we were fine with it. Admission was $7/adult and $2/kid 5-12 years old. There were interactive displays for my older kids to play with, exhibits where you can watch paleontologists clean bones, fossils, etc. I, for one, mostly sat down in the cool AC with my 8 month old for most of the time, although the little one seemed pretty interested in the displays I read aloud and pointed to him.
Their outdoor garden was pretty cool. The kids loved the koi pond that had so many fresh water turtles in it. The gift store had lots of neat affordable goodies as well.
Cool educational place for the kids!
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What is it about Mr. Snuffalufagus that enchants me? Is it his big eyes, Or his long loose trunk. Or his furry body? That certain "something" that just attracts me. Since I was a wee lad watching Sesame Street, I have loved this character. When I was visiting the Page Museum, my adoration for this cheerful pachyderm returned in full force, as I came face to face with a Woolly Mammoth.
Much like the famous Mr. S, this Mammoth was brought to life by man-made function, being all animatronic. I found the displays here to be highly intricate, with all of the skeletal bones on display, and paintings of the creatures as they would have appeared alive behind the bones. The macabre part of me also liked the wall of wolf-like skulls. I found the tar pits outside to be somewhat smelly, but not completely unappealing. I also like the statues that inhabit the main loch of tar.
Another aspect I liked was the Scientist Display Case. One can actually watch Scientists examine and identify newly discovered fossils in a laboratory with a large panoramic window. It's very fascinating. I parked next door at LACMA, and then walked over, which seems to be the easiest parking method. This was another one of my stops on the LACMA MUSE 2009 Artwalk. Especially if you have children, I suggest coming here. The kids will love it. Mr. Snuffalufagus, until we meet again...
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I am a Los Angelino through and through. I was born here, I live here, I love here, I eat here, I drink here, I work here, and I'll probably die here. Okay so yeah, that's a little bit of a morbid thought. But hey, I wouldn't be the only one. All sorts of people and animals have died here. Allow me to explain.
But first, back to the growing up in LA thing. As you probably know, we don't get very many rainy days here in the City of the Angels. We used to get more than we do now (thanks global warming), but nonetheless they were few and far in between. So, when it rained and I didn't have to go to school, there was only one place that I wanted to go... the La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum.
I mean really, how cool is this place? I hadn't been in years, so I went back (yup, on a rainy day... gotta maintain the tradition)... and it hasn't changed one bit. One iota. Not at all. Nada. They still have the "donate to the museum" cat with it's big plaster mouth open. How many of you put your arm in there while you dropped down your money? Yep, I did too, although I soon learned during my recent trip that my knuckle is now larger than my arm was back when I was a wee pup, so that trick didn't quite work... I had to pretend like I was fighting with the beast for my picture instead of the classic arm-getting-eaten pose.
They have two movies that replay every hour or so, and they are still the same as when I was a kid. One outlines what California might have looked like thousands and thousands of years ago, and the other gives insight into the process of excavating a fossil site. Pretty cool stuff. And yeah, in the first movie, the donkey (I like to think it was a donkey) gets eaten by the sabertooth cat. Sweet. Circle of life, kid, welcome to nature's prehistoric food chain. All in crappy two-dimensional old-school cartoon graphics. What, no 3d? No computer-generated animation? Sorry kid, when I was born we had a contraption called a VCR that played VHS, the cd hadn't been invented, and Ronald Regan was still an actor... oh yeah, and in that year Magic Johnson was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers (GO LAKERS!)... and yet I digress...
In case you haven't been, they have tons of skeletons: giant ground sloth, woolly mammoth, tons of different birds and other creatures, sabertooth cats (my favorite) and the skulls from a whole pack of wolves (they cover an entire wall)... and even la piece de resistance... a full skeleton of a mastadon. Sucker's huge. This place rocks.
They even still have the handles that you can pull up to see what it would have been like for one of those animals to try and escape the tar pits that lurk right outside of the museum, still burping up their flatulent stench from the beginnings of time. Of course, some of the handles are more difficult (for people who really want to see how hard it is, ie, adults), and some are easier handles for the kids so that they can try to experience the fun... at a lesser difficulty factor... but still feel like they're experiencing the real deal. Ah, child psychology.
So I give this place 5 stars for being my favorite childhood museum.. Yeah it's cheesy and totally 1970s, but the tradition hasn't changed in my 30 years on this planet and hopefully it never will.
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It's tar. In a pit. With the Jungle Book elephants in it. There's nothing more to see, unless your interested in watching teenagers make out. (Yes, I saw two teeny bopper couples totally going at it on the lawn and actually pressed up on the tar pit's fence. Ew). I didn't bother with the museum, but the park itself was hardly crowded and made for a nice weekend stroll in the sun. This is a must-see if you're visiting the LACMA (it's right next door).
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We had a great time pretending to be 9-year-olds on a field trip to the tar pits! On a mild, sunny day this is a wonderful place to spend a few hours.
Although crowded with tots, the Page Museum is a friendly place. My dad was wearing a dress shirt, and some kid started asking him a bunch of questions about the museum and the fossils. If that was me, I would have pretended to work there and give the kid some BS answers, but my dad came clean. I enjoyed reading the displays and especially feeling up the "please touch" pieces.
A word of caution: the is no parking on Wilshire after 4 pm. Guess where we parked? Luckily, the Page Museum made a helpful announcement right before 4 pm, so we didn't have to worry about being ticketed.
Wish we'd had more time to spend before our parking luck ran out, but was a good little expedition!
This museum is very small. It will take you just 2 hours to read all the plagues and take the walking tour. The same exhibits have been there since I was in kindergarten.
In short, don't expect too much.
So the Page Museum is not very state-of-the-art.
In fact, between the three times I've come here; in middle school for an overnight field trip, in junior year of high school for AP Bio; and on Sunday for fun, it really hasn't changed much at all. However, for me, that was part of its charm.
The Page Museum is very much an Ice Age museum, so sorry if you're looking for dinosaur skeletons, because you won't find any. However, you'll see plenty of sabertooth cats, mammoths, and mastodons. They even have animatronic animals on display ... I always get a kick out of that. Outside, in the park, you can observe several still-active tar pits.
Overall, it's a great place for kids and adults alike. If you're new to LA, you should visit this place at least once and if you're a local like me, it's always fun to come back once in a while. General admission $8, with student ID $4.50, USC students w/ ID: FREE. So yeah, if you're a fellow Trojan and you get bored, great place to go because you get in free.
This is definitely the coolest museum I've been to lately. It's like having a little corner of prehistoric life right in the middle of the gigantic city of LA! It's so at odds with everything around it, it's crazy. If you ever liked dinosaurs as a kid, or were ever fascinated by tales of giant animals that used to roam the earth, then this is the place for you.
The museum itself has thousands of fossils of saber tooth cats, mammoths, wolves, sloths, etc. that got caught in the tar pits over the years. Surrounding it are the tar pits themselves, some of which are covered in water. Methane gas gradually seeps up, making the tar appear to bubble - way cool. They have continuing excavations every summer, and you can even watch them working sometimes.
And although it seems like a controlled, modern environment, there are subtle reminders that nature is king and that our man-made structures are only temporary. You can see tar seeping up through cracks in the sidewalk, in the grass, under trashcans, and basically anywhere and everywhere. I wonder if one day the museum will actually sink into a giant tar pit? Probably not... but just in case, you should probably go visit sooner rather than later!
Everyone who knows me knows that I have an obsession with all things scientific and historic, ergo: my love of museums. This place is small, but seriously interesting and awesome. My advice is to take a tour with one of the guides. They have SOOO much interesting info to give out on not only the bones, but also on the history of the museum. I spent a few hours here by myself and I could spend days more.
My advice: Always go to museums on weekday mornings/afternoons if children irritate you. This means you'll always get through the museum without children running past you and screaming bloody murder. ERG!
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My doctor said i wasn't getting enough tar( Steve Martin-Let's Get Small). I just had a cup of my wife's coffee and it reminded me of when we visited the pits. We stopped by for a few minutes en route to the sunset strip. They' re not the festering vats of prehistoric goop that i knew from cartoons, but were still pretty cool. It kind of looked like an oil spill in a city park. The statues of baby mastodon losing mama to the tar made me very sad. I hope that kid turned out okay. We actually have similar pools of toxic substances back in Painesville Township, Ohio on Fairport Nursery Road(by the old Uniroyal plant and conveniently next to Lake Erie). They' re not quite a tourist trap, though.
Definitely check out La Brea.
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Nice place to visit when you want to get away from the big city. There are several picture taking opportunites. There are several animal structures around the park for you to stand next to and take silly pictures of yourself. There are also bubbling tar pits. and as you probably read from other posts, the excravation pit.
Can't really complain when it's free.
see the pictures i posted.
The boy and I came here on the first Tuesday of the month, so admission to the museum was free.
We parked on the north side of W. 6th, which has free, unmetered parking. As we strolled through the park, the boy was taken aback to realize we had just found free parking, were walking through a park with no admission fee, and were about to go into a museum without having to pay for a ticket, all in Los Angeles.
We stopped at the Pit 91 excavation, where an employee was talking about the process of excavating and answering questions.
Walking around the lake pit gave me a bit of a headache, probably from the fumes of the tar, which was cheerfully bubbling away. The fake mammoth statues were rather amusing; apparently the one in the tar pit is not entirely weighted down.
The boy: "Is the mammoth MOVING?"
Me: "The fumes must be getting to your head... WAIT! It IS!"
Entrance to the museum is free on the first Tuesday, as mentioned previously, and so was well worth the price of admission. We were both intrigued by the skeletons of horses, bears, lions, camels, and other now extinct animals, and contemplated the stupidity of the dire wolves, of which there were skulls aplenty.
We also enjoyed strolling around on the roof of the museum, where a young boy was exercising his imagination and pretending to be a prehistoric animal, much to the disconcert of his mother.
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i heart tar.
This tiny museum was a beloved place as a child, since a field trip here meant getting out of arithmetic.
So when I brought a friend here from out of town, we quickly made it through the exhibits and made for the tar! Of course, I stepped in some while crossing the grass....which was annoying at first, but just kinda ironic.
This is a great place to eat lunch too, I really wanted to have a picnic!
The only thing better than being at the Tar Pits is going home and watching that really bad movie, Volcano, in which Tommy Lee Jones must save L.A. from the Volcanic eruption from...the Tar Pits!
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I had a lot of fun here, even as an adult. The grounds are lush and green and the building is pretty cool-looking. We sat through the video when you first go in, which I swear was filmed in 1988 - a great flashback to the Hanna Barbera cartoon classics, and very informative - There were NO dinosaurs in the La Brea Tar Pits! But there ARE dinosaurs in the gift shop. Go figure.
The first Tuesday of the month is free to everyone, which happens to be when we went. It's definitely field trip day, but was still a lot of fun. Best part - simulating pulling yourself out of tar - it's much harder than you would think!
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my boo & i found free parking on the north side of 6th street...a bit of a walk but hey free is free
the first tues of every month is free admission which is when we went
man u learn a lot here and it makes u appreciate the fact that we live in such an amazing place...lot of kids but not in an obnoxious way...def an interesting place
great place to take your dogs
lots of hills,little kids,and tar
i find it funny people write their name
in tar on the wall and tourist film the
bubbles
maybe next time i'll see what is inside
the museum probably not
this is definitely one of the cooler things to check out in L.A. whether you're a local or a tourist.
although we didn't go into the indoor museum, we did walk around the tar pits and it's wild to think that this existed thousands of years ago when saber-toothed cats roamed the world.
in fact, when we were walking around the grounds, there were all these little spots of tar rising to the surface and bubbling, is was just really fascinating and definitely got you thinking.
all in all, this is definitely worth going to - but next time, we'll also head indoors.
I was... expecting more.
After living in this godforesaken city for 4 years, I finally decided to check it out after a job interview close by.
Maybe I was a tough critic because I was by myself, wearing high heels and was low on patience by the time I got into the museum... but man. I was a little let down.
I would go back though. I'll try anything twice.
Was going down Wilshire to take the "scenic" route back to the freeway to return to SD. I don't know squat about LA, so when we passed the La Brea tar pits I went, "ohhhhh shit, we gotta go there!" Childhood memories popped back into my head, and I knew I had to re-live them.
So yeah, this place still rocks. Dig the tar pits. Dig the various fossils in the museum. Really dig the affordable $4.50 tickets for students. Overall an enjoyable place to go for a couple hours.
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I went on a Friday. I've never seen so many little munchkins running around. If you can, try to avoid field trip day.
The tar pits are free to see, and there's a bunch of them behind the museum. The ones in the back are fun because you can watch the tar bubble-it's oddly hypnotic. And they are still excavating one of them and you can check out the workspace for free (props to those who work in that goop all day!).
The museum itself is pretty small, and is worth the small entrance fee. There are a lot of bones, a few interesting exhibits, and a pretty impressive mastadon. The video on the right side (by the lab) is pretty cool, and is worth a watch. I learned a lot there (like not to call it tar, because it's actually asphalt). But if you are short on time, go check out Pit 91 in the back and pass on the museum.
And I also learned I will never be a paleontologist - after watching them suck out mice toe bones from a chunk of asphalt. Talk about tedious!
Across Wilshire, there is some 2 hour residential parking that is usually pretty open during the week and on Sundays. Just watch out for random signs requiring special permits.
The museum looked like it could be nice, but my husband and I didn't actually go in. We didn't have time. We just came to see the tar pits.
I expected more.
I expected more... action from the tar pits. A bit more bubbles, oozing, slurping... something.
It looks like a normal pond with maybe a broken aerator in it and some sculptures.
You walk around the pond, read some stuff and go on your way.
I would give this place 2 stars...but i didn't wanna get tarred and feathered by tar-pit-lovers.
I too, like Adrian L., expected more. I think I've been to this museum before when i was younger...but i didnt remember it until i saw the huge mammoths outside today. Perhaps I forgot about this place for good reason!
Honestly, nothing about this place amused me. Maybe it's just me...Maybe dinosaurs just aren't my thing.
The only reason why I even ventured this far was to get extra credit for a paper i had to write. I seriously walked in the museum, paid $4.50 (student price)...and walked out 5 minutes later.
Did I mention that the size of the museum (indoor) is like the size of my high school gym?! You could cover the place in a blink of an eye! No lie. Certainly did not hold up to expectations.
As a fan of the arts, it's hard for me to be critical of any museum which exists to educate. And I'm not down on the Page Museum...not really.
It's $7 a head and you get to look at a bunch of skeletons of prehistoric stuff like wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers that existed, like, dozens of years ago.
Interestingly, there are several references in the museum to the discovery of the skeleton of an Indian woman who apparently roamed the earth at the same time as the wooly mammoths. That must have been rough on her. So to speak.
But the best part of the museum for me, and certainly for kids, has to got to be the stuff that is absolutely 100% free outside. That would be the enormous tar pit on Wilshire and the smaller tar pits located around the museum. You can actually see little fart bubbles of tar bubbling up and, as mundane as that sounds, it's pretty cool.
There is also a real working excavation pit which you can check out, although they do not work in the pit year-round.
Again, far be it for me to deprive any museum of needed funds, but you can check out the pits for free, if you wish. Admittedly, the kids inside the museum seemed to be having an ok time and didn't appear to be bored.
Outside, the smell was not as bad as I expected, either, even though it was about 90 degrees outside and I had just eaten a chili dog and chili fries at Carney's shortly before arriving. Pity the Japanese tourists walking behind me. Hey, that's what tar is supposed to smell like!
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I love the La Brea Tar Pits!
Just a note... I'm a closet nerd.
My BF had a tolerable time and didn't complain. He even wrote my name in tar! He had no real interest in going and probably won't go back with me.
But I will! I REALLY loved it - Ooohing and Ahhhing all the way.
Great natural history museum with the focus on ancient animals (mostly large mammals) of North America. A must-see if you're in LA!
My mother brought us here as young children and it left a huge impression on us... over the years I have found others who have never been.
I find it strange as it is such an enjoyable place to see and understand our planet, its history and our future...
I was able to take my husband here July '08 and he too enjoy the heck out of it.
Nothing like a big deep breath of tar and seeing what could have taken you out in one swoop of its clawed arm... or at least stepped on you.
It is also interesting to grasp a better understanding on the history of the Los Angeles area.
I think it is very well laid out and just the right size ... to not get the dry/ bored school feel.
Also an excellent picture taking spot in our thoughts...
I hope it can continue to provide many generations to come with knowledge and entertainment...
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