This week in history: South Florida Science Museum opens
On Oct. 21, 1961, the Junior Museum of Palm Beach County, now known as the South Florida Science Museum, opened with exhibits featuring local geology, marine life, birds and agriculture. The proposed NASA exhibit promised previews of future space plans, including the man on the moon program. The June 1960 groundbreaking ceremony attracted hundreds of local children who brought their own shovels to dig for treasure. The museum was a project of the Junior League of the Palm Beaches.
From the December 30, 1976, Palm Beach Post: “Seven-year-old Jeff Krosner, of Boca Raton, took a deep breath and descended to the cramped innards of a real yellow submarine. The Tigershark sub, built by the Perry Submarine Co. of Riviera Beach, is a new addition to the Dreher Park Science Museum in West palm Beach. For the admission price to the museum, children are welcome to find out for themselves how a boat can sail beneath the sea. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)
Tags: museums, This Week in History
I remember when the Museum started. I was fortunate to be able to run the Planetarium, as a volenteer, when the Museum was fairly new. Today that machinery is so complicated that only someone trained in its operation could run that part of the Science Museum. We are so lucky to have this facility in our community and we should be working to make it even better by helping to enlarge it. We were a very small county, of around 250,000, when it opened but now we have grown to over 1 million people. It is time to enlarge and allow better exhibits for our children, and in my case grandchildren, in a first class facility!!
I agree!