Niche Museums

Showcasing the artistry, history, and craft of bookbinding. The New York Times described it as "a small, obsessive collection of machinery and ephemera."

The only fully restored Cold War era Nike missile site in the country, hosting surface-to-air nuclear missiles for shooting down incoming Russian bomber planes! The first Saturday of the month is Veterans Open House, providing an opportunity to hear from the veteran missile techs who used to run these sites.

The Rosicrucians are "a community of mystics who study and practice the metaphysical laws governing the universe." Their Egyptian museum hosts the largest collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities in the Western United States, mostly collected from Egypt in the 1920s.

A working hydraulic model of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento to San Joaquin River Delta System, approximately the size of two football fields. Built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s to study the impact of proposed changes to the delta.

Locks, keys, locksmithing tools, safes and more.

A museum documenting the history of surfing, housed inside the Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse.

The Museum of Russian Culture "was established by those who left Russia as a result of the Civil War of 1917–1922". It is located on the third floor of the Russian Center Building and is open 10:30am to 2:30pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

This historic ferry pier now hosts a collection of ships, including an 1886 square rigged sailing ship (the Balclutha), a 1907 steam tugboat (the Hercules) and Eureka, a side-wheel paddle steamboat built in 1890 which is now the largest existing wooden ship in the world. The museum is run by the National Park Service so if you have their annual pass you can get in for free.

One of every Pez dispenser ever sold - over 1000 unique dispensers. Also home to a classic toy museum and a banned toy museum, including the Atomic Energy Laboratory and Lawn Darts.

Founder Michael Rugg has been collecting evidence of Bigfoot for decades, and will happily take you through all of it and answer any of your Sasquatch questions.

Unique collection of antique coin-operated arcade games, orchestrions and other artefacts, some of them over 100 years old. This type of machine breaks constantly so they are usually held in private collections, but Musée Mécanique has its own maintenance workshop allowing it to continue running them interactively for the public.