Gold prospecting pan used on Prairie Trek field expeditions
The Children’s Museum has always invited children and families to learn beyond its walls. Today, this includes popular family trips to our Jurassic Mile® paleontology dig site in Wyoming. But between 1930 and 1942, Orchard School craft and nature study teacher Hillis Howie led annual expeditions for the museum called Prairie Treks for Indianapolis boys to investigate wildlife, plants, and cultures in western states. Using a ranch called Cottonwood Gulch in northwest New Mexico as their basecamp, campers prospected for gold with pans like this, made plaster casts of dinosaur footprints, and studied precontact Native American archaeological sites. Girls were later invited on their own trips called Turquoise Trails.
