Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

On the campus of West Texas A and M University in Canyon, about fifteen miles south of Amarillo, stands the largest history museum in Texas. The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum opened in nineteen thirty-three and has grown to more than two hundred eighty-five thousand square feet of exhibition space housing millions of artifacts. Locals call it the Smithsonian of Texas.

Its collections span everything from the bones of prehistoric creatures that roamed the Panhandle when it was shallow sea, to the saddles and barbed wire of the cattle industry that defined it a century ago, to the derricks and drill bits of the oil boom that came after. A full-scale Pioneer Town recreation lets visitors walk through period storefronts. The collection of Panhandle Plains art, including works tied to the Taos Society painters who documented the Southwest, is among the strongest regional art holdings in the state.