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Dream Drives: New Jersey State Museum In Trenton

TRENTON, N.J. (CBS) -- You can find everything from vintage Jersey toys to prehistoric Jersey animals, all in the same building: The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton.

Beth Cooper, curator of education, says the museum is especially proud of its newest art exhibit featuring New Jersey craft, folk, and fine artists.

The Toy World exhibit, which runs through April 30, 2017, shows off decades worth of toys manufactured in New Jersey. Reacquaint yourself with old favorites such as a Disney mechanical musical top made in Hackettstown, New Jersey, in the 1930s. The display includes one of the talking dolls invented by Thomas Edison in the 1890s. Visitors can also kick back on a retro ouch and watch old toy commercials on a vintage TV.

The New Jersey State Museum has the largest planetarium in the state, where thousands of young people crowd in every year to watch one of four different laser shows.

The Natural History Hall features Written in the Rocks: Fossil Tales of New Jersey. Right at the entrance is the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

"People love to take pictures with it, and it just says, 'This is where the dinosaurs are,'" Cooper said.

Visitors can examine 3.5 billion years of natural history and meet what's left of some of New Jersey's former residents, like a turtle fossil that's 67 million years old, head and neck still intact under its shell. Nearby, two Dryptosaurus skeletons stand locked in a furious battle, inspired by the Charles R. Knight watercolor Leaping Laelaps.

Visitors can peer into the Paleo Lab, where paleontologists are working on real specimens found in their field work from around the country.

"We still do research at this museum," Cooper said. "It's really just looking in the earth for our history."

The New Jersey State Museum is at 205 West State Street, Trenton.
Open Tuesday – Sunday
9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
http://www.nj.gov/state/museum/index.html

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