Honorable Mentions: Western Museums We Love of 2008
Museums that showed creativity with their exhibits in 2007.
Categories: Featured Travel Stories , History
By: Johnny D. Boggs 04/01/2008
American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum (Amarillo, TX): Newly renovated, this Panhandle icon remains the best museum dedicated to the horse this side of Lexington, Kentucky.
Bosque Redondo Memorial (Fort Sumner, NM): Bringing a temporary Anne Frank exhibit last spring to a place the Navajo consider a concentration camp was bold, powerful and heartbreaking.
Cripple Creek District Museum (Cripple Creek, CO): Housed in three historic sites—depot, assay office and trading and transfer company building—in a great mining town. (We like Cripple Creek’s Old Homestead Parlor House Museum too!)
Cheyenne Depot Museum (Cheyenne, WY): We expect great things from this newcomer housed in the Union Pacific depot, a National Historic Landmark.
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum (Oklahoma City, OK): Always a favorite, this season’s highlight had to be “Samuel Colt: Arms, Art and Invention,” a traveling exhibit organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame (Fort Worth, TX): Hats off for inducting Nellie Cashman into its Hall of Fame in 2007. This museum is as committed and courageous as was the “Miner’s Angel.”
Northfield Historical Society Museum (Northfield, MN): Scored a major coup with the donation of glass-plate negatives from the James-Younger Gang’s 1876 bank robbery.
Plains Indian Museum (Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY): An exceptional seminar, “Cultural Preservations: Plains Indian People and the Maori,” stretched the BBHC’s second-largest museum’s boundaries to New Zealand.
Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Museum (Branson, MO): Run by Roy and Dale’s family, and committed to family values, the museum celebrated its 40th anniversary in style. Happy trails!
Western Mining & Railroad Museum (Heber, UT): This museum livened up by hosting its first Bordello Ball in June, and it also revitalized its collection by opening three new permanent exhibits in October.
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