USA Today readers rank these Texas burgs for having the best small town museums
USA Today recently released a list of the top 10 small town museums across the country, as voted on by readers. Two teeny Texas burgs made the list for their preservation of western culture.
A municipality is considered a small town if it has 5,000 people or fewer, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Of the 19,500 incorporated towns in the U.S., 76 percent have fewerthan 5,000 residents. Forty-two percent of those municipalities had fewer than 500 people.
Two Texas museums made the list: The Frontier Times Museum in Bandera and the Museum of the Big Bend in Alpine on the Sul Ross State University campus.
If you want to learn more about Texas history, add these two hidden Texas gems to your list. According to USA Today experts and readers, they are worth a visit. Here’s more about each museum.
Frontier Times Museum in Bandera
Bandera, also known as the Cowboy Capital of the World, is a quaint 1.2 square miles and houses 565 residents. The small town sits just northwest of San Antonio.
Frontier Times is located just two blocks off Bandera’s main street at 510 13th Street. This museum came in at No 6 on USA Today’s list.
The museum features artifacts from American Indian history and features cowboy paraphernalia. The museum building itself is also art visitors should notice — there are fossils, petrified wood and arrowheads in the brick walls.
One of the musuem’s current exhibits is “Capturing the Old West in Bronze,” which presents sculptures of characters from the early 1800s through the 1900s.
Of course, being the Cowboy Capital of the World, you can learn about Bandera’s rodeo stars and see their cowboy “Stall of Fame.”
Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for seniors and military, $4 for children ages 6 to 17 and free for those under 6 years old. They are open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.
Museum of the Big Bend in Alpine
Museum of the Big Bend is on the Sul Ross University Campus, a public four year university in Alpine. This town is only a 90-minute drive from the Mexican border, so there is a great deal of Hispanic influence reflected in the town’s culture and history This museum ranked No. 7 on USA Today’s list.
Alpine has one of the larger populations on this list, at 5,997 people.
The Big Bend region is home to the only mountains in Texas. According to Texas Parks and Wildlife, this area also belongs to the great Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico. Both of Texas’ National Parks are in this region as well: Big Bend and the Guadalupe Mountains.
[MORE: Texas is home to tens of thousands of native species. A new study says we’re not great at protecting them]
This museum is similar to the Frontier Times Museum in that it highlights the art of “American Cowboys,” which includes Native American and Mexican legacies. Their exhibits span from paintings to photos and artifacts of old Alpine.
If you visit, the museum is located at 400 N. Harrison St., C-101 in Alpine. Admission is $10 per person and free to children under 12 years old. They are open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.