Oklahoma City’s Persimmon Hill has 28,000 Wild West pieces, but a day won’t cover it

It’s bigger than you’d expect on the outside

You could spend a full day at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and still not cover everything.

More than 200,000 square feet of galleries, a life-size replica cattle town, a 100,000-square-foot outdoor space, and over 28,000 works of Western and Native American art and artifacts fill this place on Persimmon Hill.

It earned reaccreditation from the American Alliance of Museums in 2024, putting it among fewer than four percent of museums in the country with that distinction.

The collection is that deep, and the stories go that far back.

How a Kansas City man put Oklahoma on the map

The museum started as the vision of Chester A. Reynolds of Kansas City, who in 1955 founded what was then called the Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Oklahoma City won the right to host it by donating the land on Persimmon Hill, and the building opened to the public on July 26, 1965.

The institution was designed from the start to represent 17 western states, with board members from each.

In November 2000, the name changed to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum to better reflect how far the collection had grown beyond the Hall of Fame concept.

The sculpture at the entrance stops people cold

Before you get far inside, James Earle Fraser’s The End of the Trail pulls you to a stop. A Native American man slumps forward on an exhausted horse, both of them spent.

Fraser first created the piece in 1894, then built a large plaster version for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

The museum acquired that original 1915 plaster version in 1968 and had it restored. Fraser also designed the Buffalo nickel, which ran on the five-cent coin from 1913 to 1938.

That detail tends to land differently once you’ve stood in front of this work.

Remington, Russell and Bierstadt fill 15,000 square feet

The William S. and Ann Atherton Art of the American West Gallery takes up 15,000 square feet on its own.

Paintings, sculptures, and illustrations by Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, Albert Bierstadt, and Charles Schreyvogel cover the walls.

A dedicated gallery nearby holds works by Prix de West award winners, the museum’s collection of contemporary Western art.

It’s one of the strongest collections of its kind anywhere in the country, and you can take your time with it without fighting crowds.

Five massive paintings share a single horizon line

Wilson Hurley, born in Oklahoma, painted five monumental triptychs that now hang in the Sam Noble Special Events Center.

Each one depicts a Western landscape at sunset, and together they pull from New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, and Wyoming. Hurley finished the series between 1992 and 1996.

The most striking detail is that all five share the same horizon line, with light pushing in from the west across each canvas.

Standing in front of them feels less like looking at paintings and more like watching the sun go down from five different ridgelines.

Walk the streets of a cattle town built inside the museum

Prosperity Junction covers 14,000 square feet on the museum floor and puts you in the middle of a turn-of-the-century Western cattle town.

A railroad depot, hotel, general store, saloon, one-room schoolhouse, church, and doctor’s home line the streets. You can walk into some of the fully furnished buildings and listen to antique player pianos.

Lighting shifts through the space to move from day to night as you walk. The north side holds the railroad, blacksmith shop, and livery stable.

It’s a town you can actually walk through.

Galleries cover cowboys, firearms, film, and Native craft

The American Cowboy Gallery digs into the working life of ranching, from gear to tradition to history. The Native American Gallery focuses on the craft and artistry that tribes worked into everyday objects.

In the Weitzenhoffer Gallery of Fine American Firearms, over 100 historic guns from Colt, Winchester, and Smith and Wesson line the cases.

The Joe Grandee Museum of the Frontier West Gallery holds more than 4,500 artifacts that once belonged to the Western artist himself.

Down the hall, the Western Performers Gallery honors the actors and filmmakers who shaped how Americans picture the West.

The rodeo hall has been here since day one

The National Rodeo Hall of Fame has called this museum home since 1955.

Every year, members of the Rodeo Historical Society vote on new inductees, and the museum hosts a champions dinner and induction ceremony each November.

The collection here includes one of the most extensive archives of rodeo photographs, saddlery, and early trophies in the country.

The American Rodeo Gallery is currently closed for renovation, but the Hall of Fame itself remains a draw for anyone who grew up watching rodeo or has family tied to that world.

The Wrangler Award goes back more than 60 years

Since 1961, the Western Heritage Awards have honored the best Western film, literature, music, and television each year.

Winners take home the Wrangler Award, a bronze sculpture of a cowboy on horseback created by Oklahoma artist Harold T. Holden.

The ceremony also inducts members into the Hall of Great Western Performers and the Hall of Great Westerners. John Wayne, Gene Autry, James Stewart, and Tom Selleck all have plaques here.

The event runs every spring and draws major figures from Western culture to Oklahoma City.

June brings 90 artists and millions in Western art sales

The Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition and Sale has run every June since 1973.

More than 90 contemporary Western artists show work, and the museum purchases the Purchase Award winner each year, building a permanent gallery that now holds over 50 works across five decades.

The 53rd Prix de West in June 2025 generated more than $3.2 million in art sales.

If you time your visit right, you can watch the Western art market in motion while standing in front of paintings that will hang in this building for generations.

A $15 million outdoor space built for families

On the museum’s south lawn, Liichokoshkomo’ covers 100,000 square feet of outdoor education and play. The name is Chickasaw for “Let’s Play.”

The $15 million space opened in May 2020 and was funded by the Annie Oakley Society.

Seven tribes are represented through authentic dwelling reconstructions: Caddo, Chickasaw, Hopi, Kiowa, Navajo, Pawnee, and Ancient Puebloan.

A waterfall, train depot, covered wagon, trading post, and sod house spread across the grounds. STEAM activities let kids grind corn, plot constellations, load a pioneer wagon, and dodge a geyser.

Chuck wagons, archives, and Oklahoma flora round it out

The Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center opened the same day as the museum in 1965 and holds books, photographs, oral histories, and manuscripts on Western art, ranching, Native American history, and rodeo.

The museum grounds use native Oklahoma plants throughout the landscaping.

Every Memorial Day weekend, the Chuck Wagon Festival brings cooks from multiple states to compete in traditional cowboy cooking and feed families on the lawn.

The museum sits in Oklahoma City’s Adventure District, a few miles from the Oklahoma City Zoo, so you can build a full day around the neighborhood.

Visit the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma

You’ll find the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum at 1700 NE 63rd Street in Oklahoma City, about six miles northeast of downtown in the Adventure District.

The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays. Admission is $17.50 for adults, $15 for seniors 65 and older, and $12.50 for children ages 6 to 12.

Children five and under get in free.

Check the official website for current hours, special events, and exhibition updates before your visit.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• Oklahoma Beats Mississippi and Arkansas as America’s Cheapest State
• BLM Oklahoma City Leader Allegedly Stole $3.15 Million Meant for Jailed Protesters
• The fertilizer bomb that shattered Oklahoma City but couldn’t break its spirit in 1995