Utah residents are very proud of their pioneer past, and nearly every community in the state has a Daughters of Utah Pioneers (DUP) museum, which recounts the story of local Mormon settlement. In fact, church history and state history are so closely interconnected that the primary state history museums are the various Temple Square institutions and the LDS-dominated Pioneer Memorial Museum. The museum at the Utah Historical Society isn’t even in the same league.

Utah has a number of good museums dedicated to dinosaurs and other forms of ancient life. The area around Price and Vernal is rich in fossils, and both towns have good dinosaur museums; additionally, there are fossil digs with visitors centers at Dinosaur National Monument and at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. The Museum of Ancient Life at Lehi has one of the largest collections of complete dinosaur skeletons in the country.

Ogden has converted its large and handsome railroad depot into a multi-museum complex with collections of minerals, fine art, firearms, and historic automobiles and train cars.