Along Mission Creek in the Upper Eastside, the Mission Canyon campus of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History opens in front of you. This museum serves about 230,000 visitors annually as of 2023, with attendance split roughly evenly between this flagship campus and the ocean-focused Sea Center on Stearns Wharf. Step inside and you’ll find a mix of indoor exhibit halls and outdoor spaces designed for hands-on, interactive learning.
Permanent exhibits celebrate regional natural history: native wildlife with focused displays in botany, entomology, mammalogy, and ornithology; marine life; and the history of the native Chumash people. Additional galleries explore astronomy, geology, and paleontology, all within the context of the area’s unique Mediterranean climate. Facilities you can visit include a historic research library, the Palmer Observatory, and the John & Peggy Maximus Gallery, which holds a collection of over 5,000 antique nature prints and illustrations.
The museum also claims to host the only full-dome planetarium on the Central Coast. Mission Creek runs just past the campus, and the trees and trails along it wait for you after the exhibit halls.