The Zheleznogorsk City Local History Museum was founded on July 21, 1992. It serves as a scientific, educational, and cultural-recreational center for the city. Since its opening in 1992, the museum has collected over 34,000 items, including unique collections of paleontology, mineralogy, painting, graphics, and decorative applied arts.

One of the central parts of the exhibition is the diorama of the Mikhailovsky iron ore quarry, located in the history hall of the city of Zheleznogorsk. The museum also features a unique collection of minerals and paleontological finds, including fossils of flora and fauna, such as belemnites, gryphae, ammonites aged 170 million years, as well as teeth and bone fragments of mammoths.

The nature hall showcases the natural and ecological features of the region. The hall of military glory and memory contains materials about local participants in the Great Patriotic War, as well as commemorates the Zheleznogorsk residents who died in Afghanistan and Chechnya while fulfilling their military duty.

The historical and ethnographic hall tells about key events in the history of the Zheleznogorsk (Mikhailovsky) district, the fates of notable locals, as well as traditional occupations and crafts. The museum also has an exhibition hall where exhibitions from its own collections, as well as from other museums and private collections, are held.