The Geology Museum, housed in Rutgers' 1872 Geology Hall on Queens Campus, is a delightful pre-modern museum — a single grand neo-Romanesque room packed with cases of minerals, fossils, and oddities. Highlights include a complete mastodon skeleton dug up in Salem County, fluorescent minerals from the Franklin mines in northern New Jersey, and the giant Japanese spider crab.
Admission is free and the museum is small enough that an hour covers it. Opening hours are limited to weekdays during term time; check ahead. The Open House in late January draws families from across the state.