After inventing geometry and physics, Greeks invented history—primarily as a way to document their many inventions. Take a stroll through history with today’s Groupon: for $6, you get two admissions to the Western Museum of Mining and Industry (up to a $16 value).

The only accredited mining museum in the western U.S., the Western Museum of Mining and Industry expands modern minds with physical and visceral evidence of the state’s industrial roots. More than 4,000 artifacts sprawl across the 27-acre indoor/outdoor site, including a 10-stamp ore mill, a 5,000-volume research library, and a historic farmhouse. Replete with authentic machinery from the Yellow Jacket Mill in Montezuma, Colorado, the stamp mill was carefully restored using 19th-century construction methods such as handlebar-mustache ropes and banisters carved from discarded peg legs. Explore the interconnectivity of ecosystems with the mine-reclamation exhibit, and then stop to visit the museum’s resident gold diggers, Oro and Nugget, burros similar to those used by prospectors to transport their tools, belongings, and formalwear collections. Visitors can also reimagine themselves as early pioneers as they marvel at operable steam engines and learn how to pan gold.

On Mondays and Wednesdays through October, the museum’s grounds play host to a local farmers’ market, featuring fresh produce from nearby Pueblo farms. Though not included in today’s deal, October also marks the mines’ moonlit transformation into a haunted attraction, complete with a terrifying drop into the twisted passages below, a race to escape from the spooky tunnels through vent shafts and flume slides, and a coal-eating contest ($15–$20).

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