Our guests in wheelchairs and parents with children in strollers will find it very easy to enjoy the museum. All exhibits are located on the ground floor. In addition, there is an elevator so that our events held on the 2nd floor are accessible to all.

The Museum is conveniently located on the downtown square in Springfield, IL, just north of the Old State Capitol. It is a short walk from the Abraham Lincoln Museum and Library. There are many fine and casual restaurants within walking distance.

For information about lodging, local events and nearby tourist destinations  visit the Springfield Convention and Visitor's Bureau website: http://www.visit-springfieldillinois.com/

Out of town guests, why not leave your car at home? The museum is a short two block walk from the Amtrak station.

You will begin your tour with a short video on the profession of surveying in the Education Theater and see the evolution of surveying through surveys of George Washington's River Farm. 

Then you will take a journey through time to learn how the profession of surveying influenced our country's development from colonial America to the present. 

From an individual plat of land to our interstate highway system, no job was too small or too big for our nation's surveyors! During a tour of the Museum, you will see the chains, compasses and transits that were used to map our country and learn of the remarkable people who made it happen. 

There are over 350 datasets for the Science on a Sphere. The following datasets are currently being shown during the daily tours (Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am - 3 pm). For detailed information on the all the available datasets visit http://www.sos.noaa.gov/datasets/ . 



1. The Blue Marble
2. The Blue Planet (Movie)
3. The Earth at Night
4. Air Traffic
5. Facebook Friends of the World
6. Real-Time Earthquakes
7. March 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami
8. The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
9. Real Time Weather
10. The 2005 Hurricane Season
11. The Planets to Scale against the Sun
12. Our Featured Movie: Jupiter Largest

In our ever changing gallery, visitors are shown the much broader history of surveying. As new donations and exhibits come in, the museum alternates the artifacts and exhibits to tell the never ending story of surveying.  Currently the gallery hosts a myriad of interesting artifacts ranging from the Civil War to T2s and EDMs. The highlights of the gallery are: 

1. Original Abraham Lincoln documents on loan from the Illinois State Historical Society. See the decisions that Lincoln made as a President. 
2. Complete collection of original Lloyd Ostendorf Lincoln the Surveyor prints. 
3. A Civil War Surveyor's Tent donated by Ron Boulzer of Danville. See how a surveyor operated during the Civil War. 
4. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Berntsen Monuments: A collection of surveying monuments, benchmarks and pins. Find out exactly what surveyors put in the ground so they know where to start or end! 
5. An early 1900s drafting table with a series of amazing maps depicting different survey systems.