The Indiana Dinosaur Museum — the newest museum

Opened July 2024 — 7102 Lincolnway West

The opening: The city's newest museum is also its strangest pairing: dinosaurs and chocolate, on ninety acres at 7102 Lincolnway West, just west of the airport. Mark Tarner, who founded the South Bend Chocolate Company in 1991, spent more than twenty summers digging fossils in Montana, and in July 2024 he opened the Indiana Dinosaur Museum to hold the collection those summers made. The opening day itself stands in the record in two forms: the Tribune's opening coverage and the company's account give 12 July 2024; the museum's own later releases give 24 July 2024. Both are printed; the month and year are not in doubt. Building Indiana's account prices the project at 15.4 million dollars of Tarner's money with 2.7 million dollars from the South Bend Common Council, in a complex built around the chocolate company's new factory and a companion Chocolate Museum sharing the museum's atrium.

The collection: What is on display is one man's collection, professionally mounted: forty-three dinosaur sculptures and thirty dinosaur skeletons, a working research laboratory, and the museum's prize — Juliet, a duck-billed Edmontosaurus Tarner dug up in Montana, its skeleton still carrying preserved skin. The museum describes itself as among America's largest dinosaur collections, and states in its own 2026 releases that it welcomes more than 90,000 visitors a year; both figures are printed as the museum's own, which is what they are. A private collection opened to the public by its collector is an old pattern in this record — it is how Studebaker's museum began, a century and a quarter before — at the scale, and with the candy factory attached, that this century prefers.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, "Dinosaurs, chocolate, a pub: Indiana's newest destination" (June 2024) — the opening scheduled for 12 July 2024, the ninety-acre complex at 7102 Lincoln Way West, the two years of development, and Tarner's twenty years of Montana digging.
2. Indiana Dinosaur Museum releases (2024–2026) — the opening dated 24 July 2024 in the museum's own later account, the 90,000 annual visitors as the museum states them, and the shared admission with the South Bend Chocolate Company Museum.
3. Building Indiana, "Big Bones Big Bucks" (October 2024) — the 15.4 million dollars invested by Tarner and 2.7 million from the Common Council, the 43 sculptures and 30 skeletons, and the dinosaur skin.
4. Livability (2025) — Tarner and his wife Julie opening the museum in 2024 to showcase their private collection, and Juliet, the duck-billed dinosaur with skin, on display.