Museums & Galleries in Converse

Albert Friedrich poured the first foamer at The Buckhorn Saloon in 1881. Early in his bartending days, Friedrich began accepting horns and antlers in exchange for whiskey and beer, leading to a unique collection now exhibited in The Buckhorn Museum. The historic tavern claims that Teddy Roosevelt once recruited Rough Riders from among its patrons, and it is also rumored as the place where Pancho Villa plotted the Mexican Revolution. An original handcrafted marble-and-cherry-wood back bar and other historic furnishings still reside in the saloon, where guests now swig locally brewed beers and challenge each other to taser duels. Visitors come face to face with the taxidermal heads and other artifacts from more than 520 species, including a 1,056-pound black marlin and a prehistoric irish-elk skull and antlers. The museum also lays claims to a preserved whitetail deer and the rattlesnake rattle artwork of Friedrich’s wife, which guests can show to their own pet snakes as a cautionary example of what happens to misbehaving reptiles.

Adjacent to The Buckhorn Museum, The Texas Ranger Museum houses Texas Ranger paraphernalia such as sawed-off shotguns, badges, and photographs. At Ranger Town, young whippersnappers delight in glimpses of life during turn-of-the-century San Antonio, as depicted by a re-created jail, smith, and telegraph office, as well as the Bonnie and Clyde exhibit, where a '34 Ford V8 Deluxe sits anxiously awaiting its next adventure. On their way out, visitors can drop in at a museum gift shop that traces its own origins to 1920, when it was a curios store.

Davis Phillips, the president and general manager of Phillips Entertainment, Inc., carries on the legacy of his father and grandfather, who were both involved in tourism and entertainment. What began as a single attraction has now expanded through partnerships and renovations, though it still manages to thrill audiences with family-friendly interactive exhibits. Phillips Entertainment is active in the San Antonio community and the local tourism industry thanks to its location across from the famed Alamo.

The San Antonio Botanical Garden, which rests on 38 acres, not only dazzles visitors with bright sunflowers and roses, aquatic plants, and a glass display case filled with orchids, but it also teaches them about the local and world flora with informative exhibits. Four large, formal beds showcase seasonally rotating displays, and the Texas Native Trail features representative species from Hill Country, East Texas Piney Woods, and South Texas. Encompassing a wider array of biomes, the Lucile Halsell Conservatory boasts collections of tropical fruits and desert cacti housed within glass buildings that surround the sunken tropical lagoon.

Aside from these exhibits, the botanical garden also hosts summer-camp sessions, school-group programs, and classes for adults as well as children. These programs include lectures and hands-on lessons that discuss local plants and which garden insects are helpful and which are harmful.

The Witte Museum was born from many minds seeking a singular goal: to create a public forum that promoted lifelong learning. From a $65,000 gift bequeathed to the city of San Antonio after Alfred Witte's death in 1921, this museum of science, natural history, and South Texas heritage was built along the San Antonio River and named after the late Witte's parents.

Today, the Witte Museum still pursues this wide range of knowledge with hands-on scientific and historical exhibits. The museum's long-term features portray the natural wonders of southern Texas, including ancient rock art from the lower Pecos, examples of local ecology, and dinosaur fossils found locally while trying to uncover lost time capsules. Outside the museum, the H-E-B Science Treehouse collects four floors of interactive exhibits that explain sound waves, simple machines, and other scientific concepts to malleable young minds.

“It’s the rare visitor who won't discover here that his or her ethnic group has contributed to the history of Texas,” noted the New York Times in its description of the Institute of Texan Cultures. The 26 different ethnic and cultural groups represented at the educational center incline one to agree with the Times. The article went on to list the institute as a top San Antonio attraction due to its “imaginative, hands-on displays” and kid-friendly features, including an adobe home and one-room schoolhouse. Along with heritage festivals and other events, the institute features both long-term and rotating exhibits, as well as a photo archive with more than three million images.

Like the intrepid cowboys and pioneers it honors, the Frontier Times Museum boasts a backstory rife with tall tales and valiant triumphs. It all started in the late 1920, when writer and publisher J. Marvin Hunter began selling newspapers and magazines that recounted the sagas of the storied Old West. Readers enthralled by the sagas would send in relics to exemplify these stories, filling Hunter's small office to the brim. By 1933, his publications had brought in just enough funds to build the Frontier Times Museum, which has been properly flaunting the goldmine of baubles at the site ever since. The ensuing decades have yielded thousands of visitors and multiple expansions.

Today, the nonprofit museum pays homage to the fabled pioneer period right down to its very framework, with parts of the building constructed using stones from the surrounding pastures. Iconic histories are illustrated through roughly 40,000 artifacts, which populate a menagerie of display cases, shelves, and rocky walls. A wander through the labyrinth of exhibits reveals frontier-era vestiges such as fireplaces, paintings, phonographs, and fossils, with a smattering of trinkets from Europe, Asia, and South America punctuating the collection. Even J. Marvin Hunter's legacy lives on in an old-fashioned printing press.