- Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum is a
history museum on the campus ofWest Texas A&M University inCanyon, Texas , U.S.A., a smallcity south of Amarillo. The museum's contents are owned and controlled by the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, while West Texas A&M University and theTexas A&M University Board of Regents maintains and provides the facilities. Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum claims to be the largest history museum in the state of Texas with 70,000 visitors annually and more than three million artifacts.The Panhandle-Plains Historical Society was founded in 1921 by faculty and students of West Texas State Teachers College and area supporters to preserve the history of pioneer life and natural history in the
West Texas region. The museum opened its permanent and present location onApril 14 ,1933 .The museum underwent a $5.8 million USD renovation in 2001. The renovation included having the museum's entire collection accessible via the Internet. Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum also is one of the few museums in Texas that offers podcasts about current and upcoming special exhibits.
Some of the permanent exhibits include "People of the Plains: Experiments in Living", displays the difference and similarities of past and present Southern Plains settlers; "Pioneer Town", a recreation of a small settlement in the
Texas Panhandle in the early 1900s; "The Don D. Harrington Petroleum Wing", a two floor exhibit showing the Texas Panhandle's oil boom years in the 1920s and 1930s; and "The T-Anchor Ranch House", an exhibit outside of the museum which recreates the original house that was constructed in the late 1870s.From 1951 until his death in 1963, Western
artist Harold Dow Bugbee was curator of the museum. In 1990, the museum opened a replica of Bugbee's art studio. On the death of Olive Vandruff Bugbee in 2003, the museum inherited the couple's $1 million estate. The museum also houses much of the western art collection ofFrank Reaugh (1860-1945), who stressed pastoral harmony in nature in his paintings.References
*Handbook of Texas|id=PP/lbp1|name=Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.
*cite web
author = Texas A&M University System
url = http://tamusystem.tamu.edu/systemwide/06/02/features/panhandleplains.html
title = Panhandle Plains Historical Museum: Still the state’s largest
accessdate = 2006-04-07External links
* [http://www.panhandleplains.org/ Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum official website]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.