New on Niche Museums: Mattie Leeds Sculpture Garden - an absolutely magical spot up in the Santa Cruz mountains niche-museums.com/109

The Golden State Model Railroad Museum in Richmond, CA features 10,000 sqft of model railway layout in HO, O and N scale. The East Bay Model Engineers Society started in 1933 and their current layouts have been under development in this location since 1985 niche-museums.com/108

Mendenhall's Museum of Gasoline Pumps & Petroliana in Buellton, California hosts a huge collection of gas pumps, gas pump globes, signs, license plates and some historic racing cars too niche-museums.com/107

In 1972 the Shakespeare Society of America rented a warehouse in West Los Angeles and built a half-scale replica of the interior of Shakespeare's London Globe Theater. In 2008 the collected artifacts of the society moved to this building in Moss Landing CA
niche-museums.com/104

Stanley Hiller Jr produced the world's first successful coaxial helicopter at the age of 15 and in 1944 at 17 established the first helicopter factory on the West Coast

The Hiller Museum covers the history of Californian aviation, and shows his prototypes
niche-museums.com/103

In 1919 press baron William Randolph Hearst commissioned architect Julia Morgan to design a 'modest bungalow' for his ranch in San Simeon. 28 years later Hearst Castle had 42 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 127 acres of gardens, two pools and its own airfield.
niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA is the largest hospital for marine mammals in the world. And it's built on an old nuclear missile silo! niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

Ray Bandar spent sixty years collecting over 7,000 animal skulls for display in the basement of his house in San Francisco. The contents of Ray Bandar's Bone Palace have now been donated to the California Academy of Sciences. niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

Built a simple JavaScript photo gallery for Niche Museums! Click a thumbnail on this page to try it out niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum in NOLA's French Quarter is a tiny two room museum full of fascinating artefacts of the city's unique Voodoo cultural history niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

The Cleveland Hungarian Museum celebrates the culture and history of Hungarian-Americans in and around Cleveland - a city which has at times hosted the second largest population of Hungarians after Budapest niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

The ruins of Llano del Rio - a Californian socialist commune with racist membership policies that was abandoned over 100 years ago
niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

The Palace of Fine Arts was built for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and kept in place after the expo thanks to a campaign founded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

Anja Community Reserve is home to the world's highest concentration of ring-tailed lemurs - roughly 350 individuals niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

The Donner Memorial State Park Visitor Center hosts a small museum chronicling the tragic history of the Donner Party, a disastrous attempt to cross the Sierra mountains in 1846-47 niche-museums.com/browse/museums…

Fort Point, finished in 1861, sits directly under the Golden Gate Bridge niche-museums.com/browse/museums…