Museum of Life and Science: Durham's Science Center That Started as a Nature Shack

The Museum of Life and Science in Durham began in nineteen forty-six as a volunteer-run nature center called the Children's Museum, operating out of a small building in Durham. Volunteers offered nature study, a preschool, story hours, and small collections of minerals, fossils, and live animals in cages. The museum later moved to its present home on Murray Avenue.

Over the following decades it expanded into an eighty-four-acre campus with a butterfly conservatory, aerospace exhibits, live animal habitats, and extensive interactive outdoor spaces. It remains one of the Triangle's most visited cultural institutions, a long way from the volunteer nature shack where it started.