Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals, Natural history museum in Washington County, United States

Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals is a natural history museum in Washington County that houses more than 20,000 geological specimens. The collection includes crystals, fossils, meteorites, petrified wood, and other minerals displayed throughout rooms organized by type and geographic source.

The museum began in 1938 when Richard and Helen Rice started collecting agates they found on the Oregon Coast. Their growing passion led them to build a display home in 1952 that eventually became a public museum.

The museum's name comes from founders Richard L. Rice and Helen Hart Rice, who began collecting agates on the Oregon Coast in 1938. Helen served as president of the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies from 1959 to 1960, and the couple's displays won the Woodruff Trophy in 1958 and 1961. Many specimens were personally unearthed by the Rices.

The museum is housed in an accessible building and easy to navigate, with rooms organized by mineral type. It helps to allow time for reading the informational displays to get the most from the detailed descriptions that accompany each section.

The Rainbow Gallery's automated lighting cycle switches to ultraviolet, energizing phosphorescent and fluorescent specimens so they glow in the dark. Around 1,000 of the museum's specimens are too small to see without a microscope. The petrified wood collection includes a 1,200-pound white oak log from Eastern Oregon, estimated to have lived more than 25 million years ago.