SPAM Museum
Specialty Museum · Austin, Minnesota
A free museum in downtown Austin, Minnesota, devoted entirely to a tinned pork product invented here in 1937 and since sold something over nine billion times. It could easily have been a joke and it is not: Hormel has made a genuinely good small museum about the Second World War, about how a cheap protein became a staple in Hawaii, Guam, Korea and the Philippines, and about how the name ended up meaning unwanted email. Staff are called Spambassadors, there is a global tasting section, and the whole thing is done with more self-awareness than most corporate museums manage.
101 3rd Avenue Northeast, Austin, Minnesota, 55912, United States
FREE admission with no ticket required. Generally open Wednesday to Sunday with reduced days out of peak season and closures on major holidays — check before travelling, as Austin is about a hundred miles from the Twin Cities. Parking in the museum lot and on the surrounding streets is free. It is roughly ten minutes off Interstate 90.