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Just under an hour from Island Pond, located in the town of St. Johnsbury is the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium. The Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium is northern New England’s premiere museum of natural history. The Museum was founded in 1889 by St. Johnsbury industrialist Franklin Fairbanks. A lifelong amateur naturalist, Fairbanks collected examples of nature’s artistry and diversity throughout the world. His vast personal collections were first made accessible to the public in his “cabinet of curiosities” at Underclyffe, his elegant St. Johnsbury mansion. Fairbanks commissioned architect Lambert Packard to design a monumental structure in which to make his remarkable collections available for display and study. To this day, the collections of Franklin Fairbanks remain the backbone of northern New England’s largest museum of natural history.