Museum and Nagatoro

Saitama Museum of Natural History was founded in 1981. We perform our mission of collecting and storing specimens, researching and studying natural history of Saitama prefecture, and provide information to people. We accumulate the information about natural history for future, and to educate people about natural history. The history of our Museum is very long. We observe tradition and collections of 'Mineral and Plant Specimen Gallery' (1921-1949) and 'Chichibu Natural Science Museum' (1949-1980) founded by Chichibu Railway Co..

'Nagatoro', the place of our Museum is located, is known as a scenic place from of old. That was designated as a place of Scenic Beauty and Natural Trea-sure in 1924. The huge monolith of Iwadatami, is beautifully impressive.
Chichibu area, including Nagatoro, has varies geological site. You can see varies age of strata and rocks in this area. Therefore, many geologists visited this area since late 1800s when the knowledge of geology is assimilated form the abroad. Thus, this area is known as so-called "birthplace of geology of Japan". In 2011, the area was designated as 'Japa-nese Geopark'.