Regional History Center After Dark

The Marquette Regional History Center opened its doors tonight to kids, drawing some inspiration from a hit movie from a few years back.

The history center held its first-ever Museum After Dark event.

Quite a few kids and their parents lined up to get inside from the snow and cold at a time of the week in which the museum is usually closed.

History Center educator Betsy Rutz says they derived the idea from the movie “Night at the Museum”.

She says although they don’t have any live dinosaurs like the movie had, but they do have historical characters in period dress that the kids had to track down as part of a scavenger hunt.

Those characters included former President Teddy Roosevelt, who successfully sued a Marquette County newspaper for libel a hundred years ago and won six cents for his trouble.

Rutz says she’d like to see Museum After Dark become an annual event, as the attendance looked very strong even with the poor weather.

Some artifacts from the center’s collection were available for the kids to use or touch, which they usually aren’t.

They included an 1890s lock and key from Marquette Branch Prison.