Maturango Museum

Ridgecrest museum covering desert ecology, local history, and Coso rock art.

The Maturango Museum is Ridgecrest's best cultural stop and the place to begin if the desert feels empty at first glance. Exhibits cover local geology, wildlife, mining, Native history, and the rock art of the Coso Range.

Its gardens are worth a slow look too, especially if you are new to Mojave plants. The museum also helps travellers understand why this apparently spare landscape has drawn people for thousands of years.

things to do museum nature
A story
The museum became closely associated with public interpretation of the Coso petroglyphs, one of North America's great rock-art concentrations. Access to the main canyon is tightly controlled because it lies on Navy land, which makes the museum especially useful for context.