Marsh's Free Museum

For the original founders of Marsh's Free Museum, it was moving to Washington and opening a candy shop and ice cream store. A few years later when the passenger liner Admiral Benson went aground in the fog near Cape Disappointment, the enterprising Wellington Marsh, Sr. sensed a business opportunity and hurriedly opened a temporary hamburger stand to feed the curious onlookers. It was a beginning that would have Marsh return to the Peninsula in 1935, after owning a tavern in Gray's River. Marsh's Free Museum was born.

Originally across the street from its current location, Marsh's Free Museum soon became known as a place that might purchase that weird stuff found when cleaning out the attic, or in Uncle Albert's old trunk.

If you want to see a shrunken head (one of three authentic specimens on the West Coast), or a complete human skeleton (found in a closet here on the Coast), Marsh's is the place to visit.

Although Jake The Alligator Man is the most heralded of the weird to wonderful oddities you will encounter at Marsh's Free Museum, there is much, much more.

How long has it been since you've gazed into the eyes of a Yak, a Lioness, a Seca, or a Russian Boar? And these are just a few of the hundreds of stuffed and mounted animals that adore the wall or watch from their posts in the rafters.