Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum

This guide to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago traces its roots to naturalist Robert Kennicott, who helped found the Chicago Academy of Sciences in 1857 and was sent by the Smithsonian to lead an Alaska telegraph expedition in 1865. It follows the sudden collapse of that expedition and the strange circumstances of Kennicott's death near a remote Alaskan outpost in 1866, found beside an open jar of the preservative he used on his specimens. For more than a century, everyone assumed the same grim explanation. Best paired with a visit to the live butterfly haven upstairs.