You'll learn about early-day explorers, lawmen and outlaws, a Civil War battle, and the beginnings of country music. The Gerald Johnson wing includes an extensive collection of early Southwest Indian artifacts.
Admission is free.
Payne didn't live to see the run of 1889, but in 1995 his body was moved from Wellington, Kansas, to the David L. Payne Memorial on the shores of Boomer Lake, just north of Stillwater. In 1997, the Washington Irving Trail Museum nominated Billy McGinty, one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders and a champion bronc buster, to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, in Oklahoma City. In 1832, he accompanied Captain Jesse Bean and his U.S. Rangers on an adventurous trip through what is now central Oklahoma. He described this journey in A Tour on the Prairies , and his colorful account of Oklahoma before settlement provides a vivid description of the landscape before it was changed by encroaching civilization. Three U.S. marshals and two bystanders were slain during the battle.