Upper Musselshell Museum

The Upper Musselshell Museum was founded in 1984 by the Victor Fischer family in Harlowton, the seat of Wheatland County, Montana. Spread through two historic buildings, it presents rotating displays on the history and paleontology of the Upper Musselshell country — an experience its own description likens to prowling through someone's attic or barn, where a horse-drawn hearse waits with a special passenger aboard. The museum's centerpiece is a full-size cast of Avaceratops lammersi, the first dinosaur of its kind ever found: Eddie and Ava Cole discovered the fossil remains in 1981 on the Lammers family's Careless Creek Ranch northeast of town, and University of Pennsylvania paleontologist Dr. Peter Dodson joined the excavation before the specimen went to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The museum is a stop on Montana's Dinosaur Trail and opens seasonally from May until September.