May Natural History Museum
natural history museum in Colorado
May Natural History Museum is an entomology museum in Rock Creek Park, Colorado. The museum describes its holdings as the world's largest private insect collection. The museum's insects and arachnids were collected by amateur naturalist James May from 1903 until his death in 1956; the museum was founded by his son, John May, in 1952.
Description
The May Museum consists of unique 7,000 specimens of insects and spiders housed in custom-made cases with handwritten labels. The collection includes a wide variety of insects including beetles, butterflies, centipedes, and more, from locations in South America, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. Some specimens included in the museum's collections are now thought to be extinct.
The museum is advertised by a giant statue of a Hercules beetle known as Herkimer, the world's largest beetle. Herkimer stands on Colorado State Highway 115 as a landmark directing visitors to the museum and campgrounds.
History
James Frederick William May was born in England, where his father was a collector for the British Museum. May's father brought his family to Brazil, where James May grew up.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “May Natural History Museum” is natural history museum in Colorado. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Natural, History and Museum, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “May Natural History Museum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.