Hastings Museum

The museum had a lot of variety of things from meteorites, animal figures to guns and antique cars and more but of course my favorite part was the Kool-Aid exhibit and the journey of how Kool-Aid came about to years of history. Reminiscent of some childhood and it was fun.

My goal was to actually see the Kool-Aid exhibit at this museum. But I was very impressed and surprised at the rest of the facility. There is a planetarium with regular shows. There are a bunch of antique vehicles in the basement area. Their dioramas with various animals on the main floor. It is quite a collection and well worth the admission price. There is an elevator for those who need that accessibility. It was interesting seeing the history of Kool-Aid. Museum included everything from a replica of a store to costumes of the pitcher. There are lots of photos and displays of advertising and products from that time. Including variations on kool-aid. Museum is easy to get to. It's adjacent to an arboretum which is another pleasant excursion. There was a nice museum gift shop. It's very well done.

All kinds of things to see and learn about here! From prairie settlers, to a planetarium, kool aid exhibit and lots of animals... we had lots of fun! An awesome employee offered us a tour and info about how things were acquired/ some of the changes that they hoped to make or add. This is a great inexpensive place to visit!

Came for the Kool-Aid exhibit and it did not disappoint. I highly recommend!

Who knew all this about Kool-Aid?! Edwin Perkins invented it in Hastings. A great must stop to see this museum. Lots about the invention of kool-aid and the man behind it. Also a great museum for natural history and Nebraska Hastings history

A pretty cool museum. We mainly went for the Kool-Aid exhibit and it was a good one, as far as museum exhibits go. Probably not worth the drive from Omaha…. But still fun, nonetheless.

Kool, Man. Inventor of Kool-Aid left the museum as a legacy. A very nice museum with lots of exhibits, most NOT about Kool-Aid, for a small town (or even a big city). Exhibits will appeal to both young and old. A history of Kool-Aid and how it came to be is on a separate floor from the natural history exhibits.

I love this place so much, I love the historic sections but the cars are my favorite, it has good wheelchair accessibility, and it's a good spot for you kids, my cousin loved the rocks

For a small town museum (I know . . . . Hastings is a big town in this part of Nebraska . . . . I'm from here.) the Hastings Museum has it all, and done well. There's something new to see around every corner. We'll, the same stuff I saw as a kid but arranged in new and exciting ways. I didn't have time for an IMAX show this time (Yes, I know it's not really an IMAX anymore), but we did catch the planetarium show. A few exhibits, such as Kool Aid, need some attention and improvement, and I was very disappointed that the Coin collection vault was not open. Hopefully it's still in there. It would be a travesty if they got rid of it for some reason. At least my favorite thing as a kid was still there - the rattlesnake that rattles when you push a button. If you're free Hastings, lucky you! If you're passing through, it's a definite "must visit."

Love this! I came in from Alaska with my family, and it was amazing. Koolaid is my favorite drink and loved learning about it. The smell in the Koolaid exhibit was awesome.

Excellent museum, packed with interesting exhibits. Even old museum standbys get an interesting update. Gift shop is shockingly cheap, and full of great souvenirs and books. Its easy to spend at least a couple hours here, plus they have interactive planetarium shows and seasonal events. Definitely worth the admission fee!

It is absolutely stunning I love the bird exhibit because I am a bird guy myself but all the examples and stuff are so beautiful.

I loved this quiet museum. We visited on a Tuesday morning. I learned a ton about animals through the taxidermy dioramas. I don't think you need to torture live animals in zoos when you can visit long dead ones set up in their little habitat boxes here. Unlike other reviewers I think the taxidermy is a far more humane way to learn. I thought the kool-aid exhibit was weird but I'm just not that into kool-aid history. My favorite part of the Hastings was the Native American history and artifacts. There was more info here than many of the other museums I've visited along the 80. On the ground floor hallway (unfortunately to the bathroom) there are beautiful portraits and stories of Native American leaders that are very much worth reading. I highly recommend this spot if you enjoy reading plaques accompanied by well curated visuals.

Even though I grew up in the area I never visited the this museum. I found it very informative, the displays were very well taken care of, the staff was pleasant and the exhibit on Kool-Aid was unique. I knew that Kool-Aid was invented in Nebraska and I drank a lot of it as a kid so it was really nice to see that pointed out in an artistic way. The only downside was that the planetarium was only open Wednesday through Saturday and I was there on a Tuesday.

PROS - fantastic Kool Aid exhibit, interesting nature-related details in all areas of museum, some updated areas, clean restrooms, polite staff, great small collection of antique cars, very informative gun/military section, planetarium show(s) included with admission. CONS - way too much taxidermy, dated technology information, dead rodent smell in some areas, thrown-together colonial and Native American exhibit, a lot of wasted space. I would definitely come back again, and I enjoyed my visit...but it bears saying that this museum is a mix of the good and not so good. If you're a huge animal lover, do be prepared for long-dead stuffed creatures to be the very first thing you'll see when you enter. They have a lot of them and some of it's a little upsetting, especially out of context. Others describe mixed feelings about Hastings Museum and I agree completely.

I first heard about the Hastings museum from a brochure at the Grand Island KOA.We were passing through on our way to Minnesota from the San Francisco area and thought it would be a fun diversion. I am a big natural history enthusiast and American History nut. I didn't know what to expect in the middle of Nebraska. I saw a picture of a life-sized model of a Tylosaurus and thought if nothing else that was worth the 32 mile round trip to and from Interstate 80. I set my alarm clock to wake up bright and early the next day. We ate a breakfast across the street from the museum at a Burger King. At the opposite corner from the Burger King was a gas station and at the fourth corner was an Elementary School. I thought it an odd place for a museum and it looked very small. Honestly I was not expecting much. We entered the museum and paid the admission fee- $8. We entered the main hall and the lighting and Tylosaurus was astounding. The scale and being alone with the massive beast was an intense experience even if it was a reproduction. Then I looked to my astonishment dioramas with taxidermied animals and my mind was blown. I had never seen a taxidermy display on this scale. At the California Academy of Science in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park there is the African Hall but although this was only North American animals it dwarfed the Academy's display. Two floors of animals from across North America. The Great Plains, Northeast, Rocky Mountains, Great Lakes, Great Plains, California Coast, Alaskan Coast, Arctic Alaska. The dioramas themselves were so detailed it was like being sucked into another world through the display. I learned so much from the displays and the information on each animal. This was just the beginning. They had an entire exhibit on the Civil War! Artifacts and clothing from the time period itself and a few reproductions. An entire floor on Nebraska history as well with displays ranging from the Oregon Trail and pioneer days to the advent of the radio and television age. The attention to detail was very amazing. It would be an awesome experience to be a teacher and bring my class from the school across the street. Then it was the upper level of natural history. Animals that were native to just Nebraska. I never knew Nebraska was so naturally diverse. To top it off we toured the Kool Aid exhibit. I enjoyed the interactive display of Kool Aid commericals and the artifacts of Mr. Perkins. For a brief moment I was at the center of the Kool Aid world. I know that sounds weird. Truly an American legend that we can all look up to. I admit it probably helped me appreciate the immense detail in the quiet environment but even if their had been a hundred people there I would have enjoyed it. Being on a weekday morning in late August there were only ten people in the entire musueum if that. What people were there were few and far between. In the end during nearly four days of being in Nebraska Hastings Museum was the best attraction I had seen with the Nebraska State Capitol being a close second. If somehow I ended up living in Nebraska I would make it a point to work at this museum. I don't care if we had to go 100 miles out of our way on I-80 I still would return to this museum. The best history/ natural history museum I have seen in years.

The best thing about Hastings is the Koolaid creation! The museum had generic exhibits but the best one was the Koolaid exhibit.

Nice museum for a small town. We were drawn in by the Kool Aid exhibit but spent some time looking around at the Peanuts display, the old cars and buggies, and the animal dioramas. The museum isn't huge, but will still take at least an hour to browse. Admission was $18 for two adults.

A nice stop if you need to get off of the highway for a while. Since we are perpetual kids, my husband and I initially thought we would stop in while driving through Hastings to see the Kool-aid exhibit and get back on the road. We ended up staying over an hour. The Wildlife Diorama Hall has a LOT of animals. The displays are much more interestingly done than other museums I have seen. The animals are hunting, playing and interacting more than I have seen in major museum exhibits. The Tylosaurus was a sight to see. I was more than excited to see the 'Polar Obsession' photography exhibit. I happened to have seen something about this photographers experience, and it was a nice surprise to see the large printed photos on display. In the basement is a substantial showing of automobiles from all eras. I believe most of them were from the Hastings area, which was neat to see. There was also an exhibit showing the history of weapons on the plains with firearms and weapons of all types dating back to at least the Civil War. We ended our tour with the Kool Aid Exhibit and can't count the number of times we were attacked by nostalgia seeing Kool Aid items from our childhood days. Seeing how the product evolved was very interesting and fun. I would highly recommend a stop at the Hastings Museum if you are traveling through. While we did not have time for an IMAX or planetarium showing, they both looked like they would have been fun as well.

Excellent, excellent museum for such a small city! It may highlight the "Kool Aid Museum" but there is so much to see and do.

My feelings are mixed about this museum. It seemed disturbingly mismatched, starting with the statue outside of the two boys (on horseback) pierced by Native American arrows (commemorating a historical event in the area) right across from a larger statue of a wise and peaceful-looking Native American with a plaque reading "Hello friend" in Lakota. ??? No one in Hastings has noticed the irony? Upon entering, we were startled by display after display of taxidermy animals, animals from all over the world. I hadn't seen displays that old-fashioned since...I don't know when. I believe most museums have put those kinds of displays in the archives. However, we did take our preschooler around to look at all the different animals. Outside some of the displays she could feel the fur of some of the animals, too, and look at their tracks. In the same area as these animal displays, there is an impressive hanging display of some prehistoric creatures, very impressive to photograph, but relating to the taxidermy creatures how? Just because they're all animals perhaps? From this area we went into a much more modern area with interactive displays relating to the local flora and fauna. The petite one spent some time in there. The modern and the outdated definitely clash in this musuem. We went downstairs and looked at antique buggies, cars, and bicycles. Vehicles now, and back to the old stuff. Then we found the exhibit that had drawn us (after a Google search of things to see in Nebraska) - the Kool-Aid exhibit. This ended up being the least interesting to my preschooler, who also seemed scared by the full-size Kool-Aid costumes behind glass. This very colorful and bright exhibit, full of toys and plasticware, not far from the "stuffed" animals and other old things...The clash bothers me still. For those with more time, the museum also offers a 65-foot-wide screen for showing movies and a planetarium. More to file under the "modern" section. There are also parts of the museum we didn't have time to see - you can definitely spend quite a while there. We saw only one other family walking around during our entire visit. One of the clerks at the front counter also doubled as the gift shop attendant, watching our every move while we browsed, making us feel rushed. Hastings is not close to the main highway so my feelings about recommending the museum are mixed. It did have things to catch a preschooler's attention and it was a place to stretch our legs, but...Perhaps we'll try something on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus next time we're passing through the state.

It said on the website that it was open and it wasn't! We drove from I 80 on our way back to Colorado, really excited to see some Nebraska history and were deeply dissatisfied.

Amazing place. So many exhibits and sights. My favorite part is all the older cars and the Kool-aid exhibit. Definitely worth a visit. Also the movie theater is a plus.

Pleseantly surprised by how nice this museum was considering the size of the town. They have multiple levels with lots of good exhibits. It flowed really well from each exhibit and loved how big it turned out to be. We didn't take advantage of theater that plays a couple education films but it's included in your entry price. It also opens straight into the library without seeming out of place.

My fiance and I decided to check out the Museum today (because there isn't really anything else to do in Hastings) and were pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to go through the whole museum, but what we saw was really great and informative. They have a lot of unique and impressive taxidermy and there are a bunch of other wild-life and Nebraska history exhibits. The museum is also really well done and taken care of, so if you ever find yourself in Hastings, NE, I would defiantly say to check it out!!

We were drawn to this location based on all the Kool-Aid stuff, but it still held its own with the antique vehicles downstairs. It's clearly a small town museum that's working on a shoe-string budget (most if not all the animal displays are stuffed hunting trophies that appear to have been donated by a local big-wig...cool, but a little weird.) The Kool-Aid displays were awesome and we had fun learning about its origins and walking memory lane with all the advertisement gimmicks. Bottomline: is it worth a 2.5 hour drive from Omaha for the 45 min to an hour display? Maybe not, but if you're driving past Hastings on I-80, make the detour, it's fun to stay you've been there.

Although not much else in Hastings, this was a pretty nice Museum. All the Kool-Aid memorabilia is pretty cool. Brings back memories, lol. Well worth the stop if you happen to be in Hastings or even just passing through.

Hastings Museum is a really nice small-town museum. Seeing as how Hastings is the home of Kool-Aid, that is their main exhibit and probably was my favorite part. The museum also has a Planetarium, Plains History exhibits and a ton of taxidermy animals. As we walk through the museum, we decided to take in both presentations inside the Planetarium and they were great. I did feel that they had too many stuffed animals, but then we came to the Kool-Aid exhibit. To me, the Kool-Aid exhibit was the star of the museum. They have all kinds of memorabilia that will take you down memory lane, and a small "theater" to watch 5 decades worth of Kool-Aid commercials. Everyone in this museum have a great attitude, and do an amazing job keeping this museum up and running.

Been here many times with my children when they little plan to go more also been with my older son and his wife

My younger siblings always loved going when they came down to visit. Even the older ones love to go.

Hastings Museum is the first thing I ever saw in Hastings when I visited many years ago, and it is what made me fall in love with Hastings. The stuffed wild animals and birds, interactive displays, and wonderful exhibits make it a great place to educate and fascinate children and adults alike.