Day Trips
By Gerald E. McLeod, Fri., Aug. 27, 1999
|
|
The Frontier Time Museum. Saddles and chaps. A turn-of-the-century dentist's chair. A shrunken head from Ecuador. What do they all have in common? They all reside in Bandera.
The 72-year-old museum in Bandera combines the historic with the macabre for a one-of-a-kind collection. This palace of the unique is a holdover from the days of free maps at gas stations and family-owned highway tourist attractions.
A better name for this museum would be the Bandera County Attic. It is the Smithsonian Institution of the Hill Country. Mixed with the piles of antique telephones, sewing machines, and cooking utensils are some of the weirdest things you could possibly expect to find in a small-town historical museum.
The shrunken head from Ecuador, which looks like it has turned to black stone, was a gift to the mostly Texan exhibit. Sitting on the table next to the glass-encased head, like it was a place setting, is an eight-inch petrified Brahma fetus. On the wall behind the barely recognizable mass of bones is a collection of rattlesnake rattles arranged in the shape of the state.
That's how it is at the Frontier Times Museum: You're looking at the cluttered arrangement of mundane relics and artifacts when your eyes focus on the truly unusual. Sitting next to an old printing press is the stuffed and mounted remains of a two-headed lamb. On the wall mixed in with photographs of famous Texas pioneers hangs a large black-and-white photo of outlaw John Wesley Hardin on his deathbed, the bullet wound clearly visible.
The exhibit began as the private collection of John Marvin Hunter. Known as Marvin to his friends, the native Texan was a printer, reporter, author, and character until he died in 1957. As a child, Hunter saw the end of the great cattle drives and the beginning of the oil boom in Texas. The world went from horse and buggies to V-8 Fords in his lifetime.
For nearly a quarter of a century Hunter worked at West Texas newspapers collecting stories and memorabilia of the Old West. The bilingual paper he worked for in Mexico City was closed by the Mexican government for being too radical. During his career he published 16 newspapers, most of which were four-page weeklies that he printed.
In 1921, Hunter settled down at the age of 41 in Bandera to publish the New Era and the Bulletin. Over the years he had collected an assortment of odds and ends. Somehow he got ahold of the original wood marker for legendary Texas cattleman John Chisholm's grave. A woman in San Antonio gave him a dressed flea from her flea circus. He also amassed a sizable collection of saddles and firearms from the era.
It was his love of the Old West that drove most of Hunter's collecting. He published three historical magazines including Frontier Times, which went on to become a popular journal of cowboy stories. He also wrote or published several books that helped establish the Texan mystique.
Six years after he arrived in Bandera, Hunter opened his collection to the public in his print shop. A tireless supporter of tourism to the area, by 1933 the size of the museum was doubled to accommodate the visitors and his growing collection. Hunter used local building materials, and the new room became part of the exhibit. He wrote his name in marbles pressed into a concrete mantel. The fireplace at the other end of the room has the millstone brought to the valley by Mormon settlers.
When he died, the museum was purchased by the F.B. Doane Foundation. The old building was restored and a gallery added for local artists. The collection now belongs to the city of Bandera. Over the years the exhibit has grown to more than 30,000 items that range from a totem pole brought from the Northeast to a 1930s electric permanent machine used in a local beauty shop.
A good museum should entertain as well as educate. Mixed with the grotesque and strange in Bandera is the historic. Historic as in the sense that the saddles, telephone switchboards, and tools were once very much a part of life. For the price, the entertainment value of the exhibit is a bargain.
Admission to the museum is $2 for adults and 25 cents for every one under 19 years of age. The Frontier Time Museum is one block north of the Bandera County Courthouse on 13th Street. The doors are open Monday through Saturday, 10am-4:30pm and Sunday, 1-4pm. The friendly folks at the museum can be reached at 830/796-3864.
Coming up this weekend ...
LBJ Birthday Celebration in Johnson City happens all afternoon with cake, tours, and stories, Aug. 28. 830/868-7128 or 830/644-2252.
Gillespie County Fair in Fredericksburg starts with a parade down Main Street and continues at the fairgrounds south of town, Aug. 28-29. 830/997-6523.
Ballunar Liftoff Festival in Clear Lake at the Johnson Space Center presents an air show with hot air balloons and rockets, Aug. 27-29. 281/488-7676.
Coming up ...
All-American Cowboy Get-Together in the "Cowboy Capital of the World" brings music, poetry, trick roping and riding, and a chuckwagon cookoff to Mansfield Park in Bandera, Sept. 4-5. 800/364-3833.
Hill Country Concert Under the Stars in Burnet offers a romantic evening with a 2,000-square-foot dance floor, filet mignon, twinkling lights, and the soul serenade of Elliot Fikes' saxophone, Sept. 11. Tickets on sale through Sept. 4. 512/756-4405.
Wine & Music Festival at the Quiet Valley Ranch in Kerrville mixes handcrafted Texas wines with the sounds of songsmiths, Sept. 3-5. 800/435-8429.
Marfa Lights Festival celebrates the mysterious lights with hundreds of lights strung around the Presidio County Courthouse for a day of fun ending with a street dance, Sept. 3-5. 800/650-9696.
World Championship Fiddlers Contest in Crockett attracts fiddlers from around the world for a show of strength and agility, Sept. 4. 409/544-2359.
World Championship Barbecue Goat Cookoff in Brady's Richards Park pits chefs from around the state against one another for a chance for bragging rights as the head cook, Sept. 4. 915/597-3491.
Personal: Johnny or Jeremy Gonzales, I lost your address. Please call Capt. Day Trips at 441-5413 and leave a message.
429th in a Series. Collect them all.
