Rocks & Minerals

The Sioux City Public Museum’s natural history collection originated with the founding of the Sioux City Scientific Association in 1885.  Over the years the collection grew to include fossils of plant and animal life, an assortment of  important rock types and a wide range of mineral specimens.  In 2008 Dr. James Hartje greatly improved the collection by donating his personal collection of geodes, agate nodules and meteorites.  Highlights include a 200-pound amethyst geode from Brazil, stone and iron meteorites from around the world, petrified wood from Arizona’s Chinle Formation and a large ammonite fossil found in the Graneros Shale that underlies Sioux City’s Riverside Park.