Pioneer Museum

The Pioneer Museum was built in 1893 as a school serving all 12 grades, operating as Hot Springs' schoolhouse until 1961, when the Fall River Historical Society acquired it and opened it as a museum. The building itself — a striking four-story sandstone structure — is a landmark in the center of town. Across 25 exhibit areas, visitors encounter artifacts spanning more than a century of frontier life: handcrafted tools, wood cook stoves, kerosene lamps, old washing machines, saddles, barbed wire, china, glassware, pottery, sewing machines, and Victorian housewares and apparel. Highlights include a recreated 19th-century classroom, a country general store stocked with period supplies, and a doctor's office frozen in time. Original art by local artisans is displayed throughout, including paintings and sculpted sandstone, alabaster, and marble pieces, alongside hundreds of historic photographs of Hot Springs and the Black Hills. The museum is open May 15 through September 30 and is located at 300 N. Chicago Street.