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photo credit: karindalziel

You won’t have to look for miles for places to take your kids when visiting the Mile High City. Here’s a good cross-section.

Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave
Cattle driver, fur trapper, gold miner, army scout and showman, William F Cody lived the life of the old West and then packaged it and took it on the road.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show used real-life cowboys and Indians like Sitting Bull to reenact scenes from frontier life. The show traveled throughout the country and across the pond where Cody and his troupe appeared at Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebration. The museum features bows and arrows belonging to Sitting Bull, costumes featured in the show and a collection of firearms. The “Kids’ Cowboy Corral” allows children to design a brand, dress as a cowboy, sit in a saddle and try to lasso a calf.

The museum is open seven days a week from 9 am to 5 pm from May through October. It’s closed Mondays from November to April when it closes at 4 pm. Admission is $3 for adults, $2 for seniors and $1 for children 6 to 15.  photo credit: Jami Dwyer

Butterfly Pavilion
The nation’s only stand alone non-profit insect zoo features exhibits of invertebrates around the world, including:

• Wings over the Tropics is a 7,000 square-foot tropical rain forest, with more than 1,200 live butterflies and 350 plant species from around the world.
• Crawl-A-See-’Em allows you to get up close and personal with with tarantulas, leaf insects, scorpions, beetles and giant millipedes. Children so inclined can actually hold Rosie, the pavilion’s Chilean rosehair tarantula
• Get Shrunk allows visitors to walk through a world of giant moving insects.

Admission is $7.95 for adults; $4.95 for children ages 3 - 12; and $5.95 for adults over age 62. The pavilion is open daily from 9 am to 5 pm.  photo credit: bensonkua

The Children’s Museum of Denver
Features 11 interactive “playscapes’ for children from infants to age 8. Exhibits include:

• The Assembly Plant, designed for children, ages 4 through 8, allows children to work with recycled tools.
• ARTS a la Carte lets children put on a puppet show.
• My Market takes children on a trip through a market where they learn about healthy foods and nutrition.
• Ready, Vet, Go! is a kid-friendly veterinarian clinic.

Admission is $5.50 for one-year-olds , $7.50 for ages 2-59 and $5.50 for visitors age 60 and up. Open 9 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday; 10 am to 5 pm, Saturdays and Sundays.

Clear Creek History Park
This three-acre park includes two log cabins, several animal barns, a blacksmith’s shop, and a one-room schoolhouse from the 1870s. The park is home to many of the original buildings from the old Pearce Ranch in Golden Gate Canyon, which were moved here in the late 1990s. The park is open Tuesday–Saturday 10 am–4:30pm and Sundays 11 am–3pm from June through August. In May and September it’s open Saturdays 10 am–4:30 pm. Admission is $2 for kids age 6-18, $2.50 for seniors and $3 for adults.

The Colorado Railroad Museum
The museum features more than 100 locomotives and cars exhibited in three buildings on 15 acres of land near Golden, Colorado about 10 miles from Denver.

The museum building is a replica of an 1880 railroad depot and houses thousands of photographs and documents detailing the history of the region and the railway–it’s the largest known collection of historic records, mementos, artifacts, and pictures of Colorado railroads.

The Roundhouse was built to represent a small division point on a prosperous railroad. IT features an inspection pit and drop pit in stall one, a machine shop and a four-rail turntable.

Coors field

The ball travels nine percent further here, thanks to the stadium’s mile-high altitude. Tours of Coors Field are available at noon and 2 pm on Monday-Saturday during the season and Monday Wednesday, Friday and Saturday during the off season. The tours include the dugout, the visitor’s clubhouse, and the press, club and suite levels. Tickets are $6 for adults, $5 for seniors 55 and older and $4 for children 3-12.  photo credit: ChazWags

Denver Botanic Gardens
Twenty-three acres of outdoor and indoor gardens, many of which are models of drought-tolerance and showcase the plants that thrive in Western gardens. There’s also a traditional Japanese garden, herb garden, water garden, fragrance garden, and a garden inspired by Monet.

Every month features a special, self-guided “What’s Blooming Tour” that highlights certain parts of the collection. September’s tour, for example, focuses on trees. There’s also a special Cornfield Maze every fall.

The conservatory houses thousands of species of tropical and subtropical plants. Orchids share space with a collection of plants used for food, fibers, dyes, building materials, and medicines.

The museum is open every day from 9 am to 5 pm. Admission is $10.50 for adults; $7.50 for adults over 60 and $6 for children from 4-15.

Denver Firefighters Museum
Your kids can try on firefighting equipment, slide down a pole and ride a fire truck designed for kids here in the historic Fire Station No. 1. Built in 1909, the museum site was one of the largest firehouses in Denver, occupying 11,000 square feet and housing men, fire engines and horses. Firefighting equipment dating to 1866, historic photos and newspaper clippings are also on display.

The museum in Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm. Admission $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and students and $4 for children 12 and under.

Denver Museum of Nature and Science
The museum focuses on six areas of science: anthropology, health science, geology, paleontology, space science, and zoology. Dioramas, gems and minerals, Egyptian mummies and fossils are all on display here in a variety of exhibitions:

• At Coors Mineral Hall you can follow a mine shaft into a silver mine or see Colorado’s Sweet Home Minewith its six-foot wall of blood-red rhodochrosite crystals. In the historical mining section you’ll see Tom’s Baby, an eight-pound nugget of crystallized gold unearthed in Breckenridge in 1887.
• Extreme Ice, which runs through November 2, features the videos and photos of James Balog who’s been systematically photographing 27 glaciers around the world.
• The Discovery Zone is an interactive display that allows children to put on a puppet show, dig for fossils or perform an experiment .

The museum is open from 9 am to 5 pm daily. Admission is $11 for adults, $6 for seniors, students and children ages 3 to 18.

Denver Zoo
More than 700 species of animals call this place home including endangered cheetahs, Komodo dragons, and western lowland gorillas. The zoo has long been an innovator in recreating realistic habitats: Bear Mountain, built in 1918, was the first animal exhibit in the United States constructed of simulated concrete rocks.

From April 1-October 31, the zoo is open from 9 am to 6 pm. From November 1-March 31, the zoo’s hours are 10 am to 5 pm. Tickets for ages 12-64 are $12 in summer and $9 in winter, seniors pay $9 and $7 respectively while tickets for children 3-11 go for $7 and $5.

Genesee Park
Your kids can get a chance to see the buffalo roam from the hiking trails of this nature preserve 20 miles outside of Denver. Facilities in the park include charcoal grills, picnic areas, bison and elk enclosures, scenic overlooks, a softball field and volleyball courts.

Heritage Square
A reconstructed Colorado mining town from the 1870s, this square has an old fort, elaborate Victorian buildings and storefronts, shops, restaurants, and a cabaret theater. Amusement-park rides, a water slide, a bungee tower, go-carts, miniature golf, miniature railroad, and an alpine slide are some of the other attractions. The center features more than 35 specialty shops and restaurants. Admission is free, though tickets are required for many individual attractions.

The Ski Train
No matter what the season, the ski train is running. Departing from Union Station, the two-hour ride crosses under the continental divide, passes through 28 tunnels and breathtaking mountain scenery as it wends its way to the Winter Park ski lift. Riders can choose between coach, club or retreat tickets.

Tiny Town Rail Road
Created at the site of the Denver-Leadville stagecoach stop by George Turner, who built the city in 1915 to amuse his daughter. All the buildings are built to be one-sixth the size of a normal building, making Tiny Town a “kid-sized village.” Admission is $5 for adults $5, $3 for children 2-12. For another dollar you can take the kid-sized steam locomotive for a trip past the town’s 100 colorful buildings. Tiny Town is open 10am - 5pm daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day and weekends only in May and September.

U.S. Mint
Originally opened in the mid-1800s to change gold and silver found by miners in the surrounding hills into coins and ingots, the Denver facility was bought by the US Treasury in 1863. It wasn’t until 1906 that the Denver facility began actually minting coins. Free 20-minute tours show visitors how blank ore becomes coins. Tours start every hour on the hour and are available from 8 am to 2 pm Monday through Friday. You might want to plan ahead if you’d like to take your kids to see where money is made; the mint allows walk-in visitors on first-com, first-served basis, but you can reserve a date up to two months in advance.

Water World
America’s largest water park contains 40 water rides, including two wave pools, a river rapids for inner-tubing, water slides and a play area for small children. The park is open from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Tags: colorado | Denver | family | museums | North America | United States