Hemet and San Jacinto Local Guides by Mission Grove Realty (951) 927-8940
Western Center for Archeology and Paleontology:
The largest mastodon discovered in the Western United States is right here in the Hemet - San Jacinto Valley. The Western Center is a welcome addition to our Valley and provides a look back into our Valley's rich past. A departure from the bland architecture typically found here. The Western Center is an architectural masterpiece housing fossilized remains and archaeological artifacts from around our Valley. The facility also contains research and education facilities and a storage facility rivaling that of any major metropolitan museum. A secure, climate controlled facility will house fossils and artifacts on a scale rivaling that of Los Angeles' La Brea Tar Pits. On a tour during construction, the director said that bone for bone, fossil for fossil, the Western Center's collection will exceed that of La Brea's. Not only that, the Centers collection will be clean (The bulk of La Brea's collections came from the tar pits and therefore covered and impregnated with tar).
The Western Center for Archaeology and Paleontology provides visitors with important clues to the Valley's past and provide cultural, educational and financial-economic contributions to the Inland Empire as well as the state of California and reaching far beyond to students and educators around the globe. The Western Center's recent completion is a welcome and much needed addition to the area.
Features of this state of the art facility include:
- A dramatic 156-foot-long exterior walkway that greets you with an overhead life-on-earth time-line that represents geologic time periods under a stylized pergola of steel.
- The lobby features 24-foot-high walls with a cross section of earth, embedded with fossils at different levels of depth to show visitors when different species had inhabited the area. Fossils include those from a dire wolf, mastodon, bison, mammoth and giant sloth.
- Display areas in the Main Hall include:
- The Big Dam Hole, which introduces visitors to the Diamond Valley Lake construction process. Dug from rock and dirt to a depth of 270 feet and enclosed on 3 sides by earthen dams creating Diamond Valley Lake , the 4.5-mile lake bed produced most of the center's discoveries. It also shows a high-tech GIS sliding interactive map, "California through time," that reveals how the state's geography has changed over hundreds of thousands of years.
- "Historic Archaeology" shows an early homestead that represents a typical Southern California home from the 1880s. with artifacts and insights into the Valley's more recent history.
- "Prehistoric Archaeology" reveals how native people of the Cahuilla and Luiseno native Indian Tribes lived and survived in the Valley.
- A state of the art theater in the round features Max, as big as day, walking through the Valley as he would have thousands of years before us. The theatre's design includes "rocks" for seating and a sound system embedded in a "floating floor" to give viewers the feeling that Max is right in the room with them. A must see when visiting.
- "Snapshots in Time" is within the 10,000-square-foot main exhibit hall which includes expansive, glass covered, pit carved into the floor of the museum. The pit recreates the dig that took place near the Center at the Diamond Valley Lake project to the East and features the remains of "Little Stevie," a mastodon that dates back 50,000 years, "Max," a 10-foot-tall, 13,000-year-old mastodon (the largest found in the Western US), "Xena," a 12-foot-tall 10,000-year-old mammoth, and a giant ground sloth that is nearly seven feet tall. There are also many interactive exhibits for children and adults alike. Discover the difference between Archeology and Paleontology and what role each science plays. You can also cast your own "fossil" from molds of actual fossils recovered from the area, create rubbings of medallions contained in the exhibits and much more.
- An Education and Conference Center, which provides media and classroom space for students from elementary school to post-graduate researchers, research labs and storage space for fossils and artifacts recovered from the area.
We are sure that you will enjoy a visit to the Western Center. The Center is open Tuesday trough Sunday from 10am to 5pm. There is a Museum book store and gift shop that is open during regular museum hours. Consider purchasing a membership* when visiting so that you can return throughout the year to watch the progress of the Center and see upcoming exhibits. Regular prices for admission are:
Free to Members - $8.00 Adults (13 and over) - $6.50 Seniors (62+) - $6.00 Youth (5 to 12)
$6.50 Students (13-22 with current I.D.) - FREE Youth 4 and under - FREE Military (with current I.D.)
*Annual membership has many benefits and range in cost from $30 for students to $75 for families. See a docent at the museum to purchase your annual membership.
Local Guides provided as a community service by Mission Grove Realty, Realtors. Serving Riverside County, California property owners. Thank you for using our local guides.
