Utah Firefighters Museum

Today we rolled out to Grantsville to check out the Utah State Firefighters Museum. This has been on our list for a while, but we haven't made the trek about 25 minutes west of Salt Lake City. The museum is at the Deseret Peak Complex, and there is ample signage along I-80 to get you to the complex and museum.

Once you get to the complex, finding the museum is a little tougher. The signs send you into a parking lot by a guard station, but often, there isn't a guard. Turn immediately left and circle around and through the black gate behind you. This road will take you around past the Oquirrh Mountain Mining Museum (which was closed) to the Firefighters Museum.

Inside the museum!

The Firefighters Museum is in a big beautiful building, but it seems vastly under-appreciated. Hours are from 11am to 3pm on Fridays & Saturdays. And there was not a soul there. I mean, nobody. No curator, no staff, no visitors . . . We could have driven any firetruck right out of there, I think! (We didn't.) There is also a suggested donation, though the museum is free: $2 per adult, $5 per family.

This was the perfect adventure for our 3 year-old truck lover. We walked through a massive, open building looking at fire engines dating back as far as 1914. We loved looking at the years of the vehicles and the cities they came from. There are many beautiful old machines including one rear-end driver.

This fire engine is from 1927.

Our 3 year-old seriously ran from engine to engine saying, "Take my picture by this one."
I think there are about 20 pictures of him from today.

We took this picture just for our Grandpa. It's a 1948 fire engine from Nephi City--
we thought he might remember seeing it!

Our baby enjoyed being a firefighter.

He thinks he is really putting out a fire. 

Besides the actual fire engines there isn't much to see. A few helmets, some ladders stacked in the back, and a patch display the boys thought was pretty neat. Don't forget to drive around to the north side of the museum to see a few of the larger trucks.

This was a long drive and a short adventure, but our boys loved it. They loved watching the motorcycles jumping on the track across from the museum, too.

Our 6 year-old loved the different helmets and the old fire hoses.

He also loved the old tools and the nets.

Dad's favorite--the old fire truck with a rear end driver.

And we even found another adventure called the Benson Grist Mill-- an LDS church history site that we'd never heard of.