The Museum occupies a portion of Orton Hall, the first building constructed in Ohio to house a museum. The building, which was named in honor of The Ohio State University’s first President and Geology professor, Edward Orton, was completed in 1893, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Orton Museum’s renowned collection of fossils, minerals, rocks, building stones, and meteorites was initiated by Edward Orton in 1874, shortly after he arrived to serve as the University’s President. Orton’s early entries in the historic catalog indicate that he initially sourced specimens in a variety of ways, and was able to rather quickly build a diverse collection that broadly reflected the state of geologic knowledge prior to 1900.