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| Photo: Lisha Newman |
Some of the best places to understand the legacy of the West are institutions charged with the preservation of Oklahoma’s roots. There are more than three dozen such places in the state; below we explore six of my favorites.
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City
End of the Trail is the beginning of the journey through the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. And what a grand way to start.
James Earle Fraser’s monumental sculpture is worth a long, careful inspection, and that has been one of my pitfalls. It’s easy for me to get waylaid experiencing one favorite piece, shortchanging the rest of the museum’s offerings.
The Art of the American West Gallery contains several favorite paintings, including James Reynolds’ The Good Life. Painted in the 1970s, it portrays a cowboy in a yellow slicker seated on a rock in a downpour, holding his horse’s reins. So much of the cowboy mystique is represented on this one canvas – the solitary nature, being outdoors in the elements, the bond with the horse and the inability to imagine life any other way, despite the hard, dirty work.
The American Cowboy Gallery is designed to feel like the inside of an old ranch house, and it holds a vast collection of saddles, spurs, bits and branding irons that gives visitors a chance to see how the tools of the cowboy’s trade evolved. The Weitzenhoffer Gallery of Fine American Firearms is dedicated to the firearms used in the American West, and the American Rodeo Gallery is all about the sport that grew out of the cowboy’s daily life.
The Western Performers Gallery pays homage to the actors and singers who introduced the West to the world; it’s a real kick to watch some of the silent-era movie clips. Other permanent installations are in the Native American, Silberman and Eldridge galleries and the Museum of the Frontier West.
Prosperity Junction, a full-scale Western town, is likely to make you want to put on a holster and walk bow-legged with your spurs jangling. There’s nothing stopping you – if no one’s looking. Have a finger-gun shootout with your kids; maybe they’ll stop thinking you’re such a stick in the mud.
One more for the youngsters: The Children’s Cowboy Corral. Kids can don chaps and spurs, get a picture taken on a stationary horse and listen to the museum’s cowboy talk about life on the range. They can even help fix some grub for their parents at the campfire.
Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa
Thomas Gilcrease was a successful oilman with a passion for art. He collected works at a breakneck pace, especially during the 1940s. But dwindling oil profits in the early 1950s left Gilcrease in financial straits, and he found himself in debt to brokers, galleries and others. Rather than see his enormous collection auctioned off, the city of Tulsa issued bonds to pay off his debts and took title to the works. Gilcrease also gave the city the property and buildings he owned west of downtown, one of which housed the collection.
The Gilcrease Museum now contains the largest collection of Western American art ever assembled, more than 10,000 pieces.
Frederic Remington may be the best-known Western artist ever. His sculptures, which began with The Bronco Buster in 1895, number only 22, and the Gilcrease owns 18 of them. But my favorite Remington works in the Gilcrease’s American West Gallery are the five large black-and-white oils he did as periodical illustrations. I’ve never seen black-and-white oil paintings anywhere else, and the five here are amazing, especially when viewed from across the room.
Prosperity Junction, a full-scale Western town, is likely to make you want to put on a holster and walk bow-legged with your spurs jangling. 
Other great Western artists are well represented in the Gilcrease collection, as they are at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Works by Charles Russell, William R. Leigh, Thomas Moran, George Catlin and Albert Bierstadt are all here.
Charles C. Schreyvogel’s oil Breaking Through the Line is a personal favorite for its utterly compelling in-your-face action, and Russell’s 1915 Meat’s Not Meat Until it’s in the Pan tells a great cowboy life story in spectacular colors. Some of the landscapes, including Moran’s massive Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, give an entirely different impression in person than they can in a book.
Part of the fun at the Gilcrease is wandering about and eventually discovering the Vista Room. You’ll know when you’ve found it.
Chisholm Trail Heritage Center, Duncan
The Chisholm Trail Heritage Center in Duncan is about the coolest little museum north of the Red River. There’s a fine art gallery with some excellent pieces, a diorama of native species found on the famous cattle trail and enough interactive exhibits to keep the family busy for the afternoon.
Children can try out a hat and rope in front of the full-size re-creation of the Duncan Store, but the stars of the show are the two theaters. The Campfire Theater lets visitors get up close to a robotic Jesse Chisholm as he chats around the campfire, and the Experience Theater is about the most fun you can have while learning history. It’s rigged for the audience to see, hear, feel and even smell the story. There’s great fun in the thunderstorm and river-crossing scenes.
Will Rogers Museums, Claremore and Oologah
“A man that don’t love a horse, there is something the matter with him.” So said Will Rogers, Oklahoma’s favorite son. Of course, Rogers said a lot of memorable things, which is how he became Oklahoma’s favorite son.
The Dog Iron Ranch, on the shores of Lake Oologah, was Rogers’ birthplace. The 400-acre spread is open all year, and Roger’s boyhood home maintains an authentic 1880s air.
While the Dog Iron provides a glimpse of life on the Western frontier, the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore offers a collection of original Western art by Charles M. Russell and others, a Western saddle collection and extensive photography and memorabilia related to Rogers’ life.
The library at the museum provides office space for staff members, but it is also open to researchers and writers. The facility includes a children’s museum.
Hinton Historical Museum & Parker House
Credit Art Peters with almost single-handedly putting together the collection at the Hinton Historical Museum & Parker House. The Parker House is a two-story pink farmhouse next to a two-story, 25,000-square-foot barn. The barn houses a collection of local and state historical items dating to the late 1800s.
The collection of horse-drawn carriages is the state’s largest. From the range, the museum also has Oklahoma’s third-largest collection of barbed wire and even a bicycle or two that pre-date statehood by 35 years. The collection gives a good feel for how people lived in the West and how things progressed after the turn of the century.
Eastern Trails Museum, Vinita
Peters’ counterpart in Vinita is Wanda Norton. The Eastern Trails Museum, in the Maurice Haynes Memorial building, holds American Indian artifacts, Western hats and saddles and enough other historical items that part of a general store has been created with goods on the shelves and an antique cash register. There’s also a post office, doctor’s office and printing shop.
Admission is free, but the museum is open limited days and hours, so it’s a good idea to call ahead and make sure a volunteer is available to let you in.
