New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum - 2/01/15

Today we spent a couple of hours at this museum and, I have to say, I enjoyed more than we expected! It's a 47-acre interactive museum that chronicles 3,000 years of history of farming and ranching in this part of the country. Located in the southeastern part of Las Cruces, NM, it has exhibits in the Bruce King Building as well as multiple farm buildings and corrals with livestock.

Entry to the museum is through the Bruce King Building.

Lobby.

The Eagle Ranch Gift shop is located off of the lobby.

Wine, too!

A map of the museum is provided after you pay for admission. There are six galleries in the Bruce King Building. We started at the "Cowboys: The Real Deal" exhibit.
Hats.

Saddles circa 1925.

Spurs.

Winchester Rifles -1894.

Peter Hurd (artist) grew up in NM; received an appointment to West Point; left after 2 years to attend the PA Academy of Fine Arts; studied with N.C. Wyeth in Chadds Ford, PA. (This is close to where we owned our last home.) He married N.C.'s oldest daughter, Henrietta, and moved back to NM in 1929 where they lived on a ranch. Several of his paintings are display; here are a couple of them.

We continued through the Heritage Gallery to the displays of the Mogollon culture, New Mexico's prehistoric farmers, who lived in the area 1,300 years ago. Here is a reproduction a pithouse, a half-buried structure.

I tried grinding corn the way these prehistoric people did, and it was harder to do than you would think!

Chuck wagon.

Windmill/farm artifacts.

Every time I see laundry and kitchen displays, I think that I would not have made a very good housewife then!

General store.

We continued our tour of the museum by proceeding to the outdoor exhibits. Loved the Blacksmith demo of how nails were made. When building a home in the late 1800s, the nails were more costly than the lumber!

Historic Green Bridge, the oldest steel highway bridge in NM, built in 1902 and used until 1943 when the highway was relocated (due to flooding). It was donated to the museum in 2007 and reconstructed on site.

Skaggs Dairy Barn. Diary farming is a $1.6B business in the New Mexico economy and ranks 8th (by state) in diary production in the U.S. There are interesting exhibits in the building about the industry in general and the mechanization improvements that began in the 1920s.

Ice cream making.

Don't think I would be too good at this milking business, either.

Farming equipment.

Sheep and Goat Barn.
Boer Goat.

Suffolk Sheep.

Navajo-Churro Sheep.

Horse and Cattle Barn.

"Slim" Green's Saddle Shop.

He was famous for the beautiful fancy saddles he designed for his clients.

Livestock corrals.

"Watering Place" by Armando Alvarez

Admission to the Museum is $5/adults and $3/seniors. We visited on a Sunday afternoon, and there were very few people there. The exhibits here are so well done. And we really enjoyed the outdoor exhibit areas, too. Various demonstrations are scheduled throughout the day. This place is definitely worth a visit if you are in Las Cruces.

Be sure to check out their website for more details on the hours of operation, demonstrations, and special events. Cowboy Days is scheduled for March 7 and 8, 2015.

Website: www.nmfarmandranchmuseum.org