Texas Science and Natural History Museum
- Kimi's Travel Thoughts
- Jul 8
- 5 min read
July 2025 Monthly Adventure
With a relatively mild June as far as the temperature is concerned, I decided to squeeze in an outdoor activity by going to a local baseball game with friends. However, July is starting off with rain and ramping up to triple digit air temperatures which means I need to find more indoor activities to enjoy and that led me to finding another museum in Austin that I have not previously visited: the Texas Science and Natural History Museum.
Background
As an undergraduate student at The University of Texas at Austin, I never went to the Texas Science and History Museum despite it being free with my student ID card because it was one of the museums located on the campus. At the time, it was named the Texas Memorial Museum and I was only ever that far east on campus for a couple of music electives and football games. The museum eventually shut down as it underwent major updates and in recent years returned as the Texas Science and Natural History Museum. I had been meaning to visit since it's grand reopening and decided that an afternoon at the museum during a holiday weekend would be a good way to kick off the month of July!
Tickets
Students, faculty, and staff of The University of Texas at Austin can enjoy free general admission to the Texas Science and Natural History Museum upon entry with their university-issued ID card. Tickets are also free for activity military with a valid ID. Otherwise, tickets will cost either $6 or $10 depending on the category. Tickets can be reserved in advance online and are valid any day the museum is open.
Parking
When it comes to The University of Texas at Austin, parking is never free unless you're visiting the LBJ Library and Museum (which I did three years ago). If you're willing to walk a bit for the sake of free parking, the two museums are not too far apart from each other. Otherwise, the San Jacinto Garage is right next to the Texas Science and Natural History Museum and offers paid parking. It will likely cost about $6 for parking if you're only visiting the museum. Given the weather and the need to run errands after, I opted to drive myself and park in the garage rather than take the bus to campus and walk from the nearest bus stop without a transfer.
Another thing to keep in mind about parking is that this very large university will frequently have events (sometimes multiple on the same day) in this area of campus. It's recommended that you check the Texas Science and Natural History Museum website for any parking notices as you plan your museum visit. My advice is to avoid going on a Saturday in the fall months because the football games will take over every corner of the east side of the UT Austin campus.
Exploring the Texas Science and Natural History Museum
At the time of this blog post being written and published, there are some construction projects and exhibit updates happening around and inside of the Texas Science and Natural History Museum. Fortunately, signage for navigating your way to and through the museum is very clear and easy to follow. Upon entering the building, you start out on the second floor where you will find the check-in desk and gift shop. This floor also features a small exhibit and two large dinosaur skeletons which are great for photos and getting a sense of just how large these extinct creatures were.
Did you know? The second floor of the Texas Science and Natural History Museum also doubles as an event space! It's a really cool location for banquets or weddings and they have an in-house events team to help make sure everything is properly coordinated for your event.
From the second floor, I followed the recommended route and went downstairs to the first floor which was filled with meteors, fossils, petrified wood, and skeletons of dinosaurs in different habitats across multiple time periods in earth's history that were all primarily sourced in Texas. There is even a "discovery zone" which is meant for people (especially children) to have an opportunity to touch different materials, such as fossils, for a more interactive experience.
The third floor of the Texas Science and Natural History Museum was one that I really gravitated towards once I arrived there. This is the gallery floor that shows life-like animals native to Texas in galleries of designed to look like a realistic version of their respective regional habitats. Having spent my entire life in Texas, I enjoyed getting to see the furry animals, shelled animals, nocturnal animals, reptiles, and birds that I have always enjoyed seeing in my own Houston area backyard growing up and around Central Texas as an adult! I recently went to a wildlife refuge along the Gulf Coast, so it was really cool to see examples of some of the birds I saw at a distance in a much closer range.
On the fourth floor, it felt a bit like stepping into a time machine which gives a preview of the future could be like. I say this because is the Science Frontiers floor and the current exhibit on display at the time of my visit was the "Particles of Color: Where Science Meets Fashion" exhibit! This special exhibit featured fashionable clothing items with environmentally-friendly sequins designed and developed by students and faculty in the Textiles & Apparel department at The University of Texas at Austin. It really put into perspective how much science (such as chemistry and biology) goes into designing clothes and creating sustainable materials. While this floor was purely dedicated to featuring the work of UT Austin students and faculty, the relevant research projects of campus faculty are mentioned across all exhibits in the museum. I found this to be a thoughtful way to connect the museum to campus even more than just its physical presence.
Wrap-Up
I'm so glad I finally had the opportunity to visit the Texas Science and Natural History Museum! It was a lot of fun to take a couple of hours to learn about Texas history from this perspective. The museum is a popular place for elementary school field trips and I can understand why. It's very interactive and brings the things you see in textbooks "to life", and suddenly something that may have been a bit more difficult to picture is much clearer. With this being summer, there were many families there visiting with their young children and these tiny humans were so excited to see everything in the museum. Whether going solo like me, with children, or with friends, I think this is a great museum in Austin to visit if you get the chance!
On to the next adventure!
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