Unusual museums in San Diego
Looking for unusual museums & collections in San Diego? These 10 are the genuinely strange ones — San Diego Model Railroad Museum, Chicano Park, "Trees" by Terry Allen (Stuart Collection, UCSD) and more — each hand-vetted and sourced, not pulled from a top-ten list. Great for an unusual date, a weird afternoon, or showing a visitor the side of San Diego they'd never find on their own.
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San Diego Model Railroad Museum
North America's largest model railroad museum at 27,000 square feet, built and still tended by four rival loc…
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Chicano Park
In 1970, Barrio Logan residents occupied a patch of land under the newly built San Diego–Coronado Bridge to s…
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"Trees" by Terry Allen (Stuart Collection, UCSD)
Three eucalyptus trees salvaged from a demolished grove, all sheathed in lead — two of them wired with hidden…
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"Bear" by Tim Hawkinson (Stuart Collection, UCSD)
Eight boulders of local granite, stacked 23.5 feet tall and weighing 180 tons total, engineered into the unmi…
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"Snake Path" by Alexis Smith (Stuart Collection, UCSD)
A 560-foot mosaic snake made of hexagonal slate scales winds up a hillside to a seven-foot granite book carve…
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San Diego Firehouse Museum
Run by retired and off-duty firefighters out of a real former fire station (San Diego Fire Station No. 6, in…
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California Surf Museum
A permanent surfboard timeline running from waterlogged early-1900s wooden planks to modern shortboards, cent…
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Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum
A free museum built around one obsession — machines and engines shrunk to working scale — anchored by a 1/6-s…
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Museum of Illusions San Diego
A Gaslamp storefront packed with 'illusion rooms,' upside-down and perspective-warping chambers, and sensory…
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Deer Park Winery & Auto Museum
Three barns holding over 100 vintage American cars sit above a working vineyard, including a recreated 1950s…