Hawthorne Ordnance Museum

Great place to see things you will only see on tv. Hands on real learning!!

Very interesting place. Stop by and check it out.

This place is a gem. A must see, and a surprise

It is a small town museum with a lot of heart. There are artifacts of living pre_electricity, mining, military, and zoological. I particularly liked the old safes and the strong box. There are some very nice old machinery. my husband liked the football size piece of silver ore.

The Hawthorne Ordnance Museum is one of those rare gems that one can stumble across when traveling the back roads of America. Are you a fan of military history? Ever watch old war movies as a kid, and wonder if those round anti-ship mines floating in the ocean were really as big as they looked? Want to stand next to one of the shells that could be fired from the 16" guns (naval rifles, to be more accurate) of WWII battleships? Curious to see actual bombs, shells, machine guns as well as a huge variety of military equipment of the type used over the last century? This is the place to go. I happened to visit purely by accident. I was visiting the town on business and had a few hours to kill. I stepped into the museum and... wow. Having never served in the military myself, most of the stuff on display I had only ever seen before on TV or in the movies. Before I go any further, let me add that ALL THE MUNITIONS ARE INERT - that is, there are no explosive charges in any of them. It's the real stuff, but it's been rendered non-functional and is perfectly safe to be around and even to touch. Yep, that's right. You can touch many of the displays. You can stand next to a big anti-ship mine from WWII (about four to five times the size of your average beach ball) and give it a little pat. The museum doesn't charge a fee. IT'S FREE!! Who could ask for more? They do accept donations, which I happily ponied up. After all, isn't getting to see a cutaway of an actual cluster bomb unit and getting to stand next to a Hellfire missile worth the cost of a Big Mac combo meal? I sure thought it was. There's way too much stuff to list here. And they're always adding more, according to the very friendly volunteer staff person who showed me around. I believe they're open daily from ten a.m to five. (Wish I had paid more attention to that.) If you're planning a trip from Reno to Las Vegas or vice versa, you'll run right through the town and past the museum on U.S. 95. Plan ahead, and be ready to take a few hours off. Get out the car and plan on taking an educational detour through a hundred years of military memorabilia. I can't stress enough that it's worth the stop!