During road trips, nothing beats a museum for prompting a child’s eyes to glaze over. History? To kids, that means last year. But a handful of Colorado museums will pique the interest of otherwise jaded youth. Here are some of them:

Giant Steam Shovel

Colorado 119 at Colorado 72, outside the Nederland Mining Museum, Nederland

Dig in.

This behemoth, officially known as the Bucyrus 50-B steam shovel, was built in 1923 and labored at the Lump Gulch Placer mine near Rollinsville. When the mine closed in 1973, the steam shovel was left to itself for 35 years. In 2005, it was donated to the Nederland Area Historical Society as the last functional steam shovel of its kind in the world.

It did not actually dig the Panama Canal, which was completed in 1914, long before the Bucyrus 50-B was a gleam in a welder’s eye. Instead, the Bucyrus 50-B is the last survivor of a fleet of 24 steam shovels that disposed of dirt and rocks excavated from the canal, and helped construct dams, bridges and roads in the wake of the canal’s nominal completion.

Bonus: Nederland is also the home of the Tuff Shed Cryogenics Mausoleum, which houses the celebrated Grandpa Bredo Morstoel. He inspired the town’s annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival.

The mausoleum, which really is a Tuff Shed, is located on private land and no longer is open to the public.

Grampa Jerry’s Clown Museum

22 Lincoln Ave., Arriba

Smile awhile.

Heading eastward to check out the Kit Carson County Carousel? On the way back, factor in an extra hour to see Jerry Eder’s small-c catholic collection of approximately 3,500 examples of clown-related ephemera.

Less a true museum than a curiosity, the tiny building is subdivided by floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with an indiscriminate congregation of clowns, from clocks, mugs, Christmas-tree ornaments to antique carnival games and a clown painted on a hairball found in a cow’s stomach — a sight that young (and old) visitors will never, ever forget. Ever.

Colorado Territorial Prison Museum

201 N. First St., Cañon City; 719-269-3015

Bar none.

The exhibits include the noose used in Colorado’s last execution by hanging, confiscated inmate weapons and other verboten things acquired on the prison’s black market, and a display about the punitive tools employed as far back as 1871.

Don’t miss the gift shop, which sells arts and crafts made by present-day residents of various Colorado prisons.

May Natural History Museum of the Tropics

710 Rock Creek Canyon Road, Colorado Springs; 719-576-0450

Meet the beetles.

What is a museum with more than 8,000 tropical bugs doing in desert-dry Colorado? It’s the inheritance of Colorado transplant John M. May, who spent his boyhood in Brazil, where his father found Upper Amazon River insects for the British Museum’s collection.

On display: the May family’s most dramatic specimens, including a 17-inch stick insect, flying Colombian beetles big enough to shatter street lights upon impact, and a 9-inch Congolese scorpion.

The exhibit’s iconic highlight: A massive Hercules beetle that signals the turnoff from Colorado 115, southwest of Colorado Springs.

-Claire Martin