National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum Oklahoma City │ America’s Premier Western Museum

Welcome to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

Atop Persimmon Hill in the Adventure District of northeast Oklahoma City, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum stands as America’s most comprehensive institution dedicated to the history, art, and cultures of the American West. A Smithsonian Affiliate with more than 10 million visitors since its founding and a campus spanning over 300,000 square feet, it houses a staggering collection of more than 28,000 Western and Native American artworks and artifacts — everything from masterworks by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell to the world’s most extensive collection of American rodeo photographs, barbed wire, and saddlery. James Earle Fraser’s magnificent 18-foot plaster sculpture End of the Trail anchors the entrance foyer. A fully constructed 14,000-square-foot frontier cattle town called Prosperity Junction fills the west wing. An outdoor 100,000-square-foot interactive children’s learning space named Liichokoshkomo’ (“Let’s Play” in Chickasaw) invites families to grind corn, dodge a geyser, and load a prairie schooner. And a bold new 360-degree immersive experience called The Cowboy: An Immersive Journey wraps visitors in the landscapes and stories of the American West like nothing else on earth. The museum’s connection to Route 66 is literal: it overlooks the old highway from its hilltop campus, and its story is inseparable from Oklahoma City’s identity as the most important stop on the Mother Road’s path through the Southwest.

Where Is the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum?

The museum is located at 1700 Northeast 63rd Street, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73111, in the Adventure District of northeast Oklahoma City — approximately 3.5 miles northeast of the state capitol and about 10 miles from downtown OKC. The museum sits on Persimmon Hill, a gentle rise that provides sweeping views of the surrounding Oklahoma landscape and overlooks the old Route 66 corridor. Ample free parking is available on the museum campus, and the site is fully wheelchair accessible with ADA-compliant entrances and no stairs at the main entry.

The History of the Museum

Chester A. Reynolds and the Founding Vision

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum traces its origins to the early 1950s and the vision of Chester A. Reynolds, a Kansas City entrepreneur and president of Lee Jeans who had grown deeply concerned about what he saw as the nation’s loss of its western heritage. Reynolds launched a campaign to create a major institution that would honor the men and women who settled the American West — and Oklahoma City won the designation with its donation of property on Persimmon Hill. The organization was incorporated as the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center under the laws of the District of Columbia on October 16, 1955, designed from the outset to represent all seventeen western states, with each state’s governor appointing a representative to the board of directors.

Opening Day: John Wayne and July 26, 1965

After nearly a decade of fundraising and construction, the museum opened its doors to the public on July 26, 1965. The opening day was a spectacle that matched the museum’s ambitions: John Wayne served as parade marshal at the dedication, and the Hollywood icon went on to serve on the museum’s board of directors for more than a decade. Wayne’s extensive personal collections are among the museum’s most prized historical holdings. The institution that opened in 1965 immediately began acquiring, cataloging, and exhibiting art, artifacts, and archival materials celebrating the American cowboy and the settlers who shaped the West.

Growth, Expansion, and the Art Emphasis

In 1961, the first Western Heritage Awards were presented for excellence in Western film, literature, and music, and inductions were made into the Great Westerners Hall of Fame and the Western Performers Hall of Fame. In 1973, the museum organized the National Academy of Western Art, which launched the annual, juried Prix de West Invitational Exhibition — a showcase for the finest contemporary Western art that remains one of the most prestigious events in the American art world today. By the late 1980s, the museum had assembled one of the finest Western art collections in the nation, and its contemporary holdings are now recognized as the world’s best collection of contemporary Western art. The museum also publishes Persimmon Hill magazine, which began in 1970 as a showcase for the museum’s collections, exhibitions, and events.

Accreditation and the Modern Name

After navigating internal financial difficulties in the mid-1980s and launching a major building campaign, the institution received full accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums in 2000. On November 16, 2000, it took on its current name — the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum — reflecting its expanded mission of education and enrichment for diverse audiences. The museum subsequently became a Smithsonian Affiliate, connecting it to the national network of America’s premier educational and cultural institutions.

The Collection: 28,000 Works and the Finest Western Art on Earth

End of the Trail: The Icon That Greets Every Visitor

No visitor to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum forgets their first encounter with James Earle Fraser’s End of the Trail. The sculpture — an 18-foot-tall plaster original, depicting a lone, exhausted Native American warrior slumped on the back of a weary horse — dominates the entrance foyer with a monumentality that stops people in their tracks. Fraser created the piece as a symbol of the plight of Native peoples displaced by westward expansion, and its power has not diminished in the century since it was first exhibited. It is one of the most recognizable works of Western American art and one of the most emotionally resonant first impressions any museum in the country offers to its visitors. Begin and end your museum visit here, as TravelOK recommends — the sculpture reads differently after you’ve spent several hours inside understanding the history it memorializes.

The Art of the American West Gallery

The William S. and Ann Atherton Art of the American West Gallery occupies 15,000 square feet and houses the museum’s extraordinary fine art collection — more than 2,000 works of western art spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection includes over 200 works by Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington, the two most celebrated painters of the American West, alongside significant works by Albert Bierstadt, Solon Borglum, Robert Lougheed, Charles Schreyvogel, and many other early masters. The gallery also holds over 700 pieces by Edward S. Curtis — the photographer whose epic visual documentary of Native American life in the early 20th century stands as one of the most significant photographic projects in American history — and over 350 works by Joe De Yong, Russell’s only formal student and protege.

Five monumental western landscape triptychs by Wilson Hurley, housed in the Sam Noble Special Events Center, serve as what one art historian called “true windows to the West” — massive paintings that create an almost immersive experience of the landscape they depict. They are among the most extraordinary works of western landscape painting in existence and alone justify a visit to the museum.

The Prix de West Collection and Contemporary Western Art

The museum’s Prix de West Invitational Exhibition has been held annually since 1973, showcasing more than 90 of the country’s most prominent contemporary Western artists each June. The Prix de West is the most prestigious invitational exhibition in contemporary Western art, and the museum’s growing collection of Prix de West works represents the finest contemporary Western art collection in the world. Each year the museum purchases one exhibition work as the Prix de West purchase prize — a tradition that has built the collection systematically over five decades. The first winner was Clark Hulings’s large oil, Grand Canyon — Kaibob Trail, depicting a mule team crossing a Grand Canyon trail in deep winter snow.

The American Cowboy Gallery

The American Cowboy Gallery traces the full arc of cowboy culture from its vaquero roots in Spanish and Mexican tradition through the cattle drives of the 19th century, the frontier ranch era, and the evolution of cowboy life and identity into the 20th century and today. Exhibits include historic saddles, spurs, chaps, firearms, lariats, branding irons, and other working cowboy gear — alongside photographs, diaries, and personal accounts from the men and women who actually lived the cowboy life. The gallery contextualizes the cowboy not as a mythic figure but as a working person whose skills, traditions, and culture shaped the American West in profoundly practical ways.

The American Rodeo Gallery and the National Rodeo Hall of Fame

Fashioned after a 1950s rodeo arena, the American Rodeo Gallery celebrates America’s native sport with the same comprehensive passion the museum brings to its other subjects. The museum holds the world’s most extensive collection of American rodeo photographs, and the gallery displays the equipment, clothing, and memorabilia of the rodeo world alongside the stories of the athletes who competed at its highest levels. The museum is home to the National Rodeo Hall of Fame, established in 1955 (the year of the museum’s founding) — one of the oldest and most respected halls of fame in American sport. In September 2022 it was announced that the American Rodeo Gallery would also house the Professional Bull Riders Heroes & Legends Hall of Fame, which opened in 2023, bringing PBR’s premier recognition program under the same roof as the National Rodeo Hall of Fame for the first time.

The Native American Gallery

The Native American Gallery focuses on the embellishments that western tribal nations made to their everyday objects — the beadwork, quillwork, weaving, and decorative arts through which Indigenous peoples expressed their beliefs, histories, and identities. The Arthur and Shifra Silberman Native American Art Gallery presents a narrative arc from historic ledger art to contemporary Native American work, tracing the evolution of Indigenous artistic expression across more than a century. The museum’s treatment of Native American culture is notable for its depth and care — recognizing that the story of the American West cannot be honestly told without centering the peoples who were most profoundly affected by western expansion.

The Western Entertainment Gallery and the Halls of Fame

The Western Entertainment Gallery explores the enormous role that Hollywood Western films played in shaping the mythology and cultural legacy of the American West. From the early silent era to the Spaghetti Western, cowboy films defined how the world imagined the frontier, and this gallery documents that cinematic history with film memorabilia, star biographies, and artifacts from the movie industry’s long love affair with Western themes. The museum’s Western Performers Hall of Fame and Great Westerners Hall of Fame honor the individuals who have most authentically and admirably represented the spirit and traditions of the American West across all walks of life.

Prosperity Junction: A Frontier Town You Can Walk Through

Among all the experiences the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum offers, Prosperity Junction is the one most consistently cited as a highlight by visitors of every age and background. This 14,000-square-foot, fully constructed frontier cattle town with 19 buildings rises in the museum’s west wing beneath 40-foot ceilings, somewhere in the American West (the entrance plaque deliberately does not specify a location, inviting visitors to imagine themselves anywhere on the frontier). It stretches from an industrial section — a railroad depot, livery stable, and blacksmith shop — through a commercial district and into a residential section with homes, a church, and a one-room schoolhouse.

Visitors do not simply look at Prosperity Junction from a distance: they walk its streets, peer through windows and into fully furnished buildings, listen to antique player pianos sounding from behind saloon doors, and explore a community that feels genuinely inhabited rather than merely displayed. The attention to period detail — the shop goods on the general store shelves, the harness hanging in the livery, the hymn books open on the church pews — gives the town a tangibility that photographs and artifacts in conventional display cases cannot match. Prosperity Junction is one of the most effective immersive history environments anywhere in an American museum.

Liichokoshkomo’: Let’s Play in the American West

In 2020, the museum opened Liichokoshkomo’ — a word meaning “Let’s Play” in the Chickasaw language — an outdoor, hands-on learning and play experience covering more than 100,000 square feet. The space celebrates the tribal cultures of the American West through purposeful play and engaging activities drawn from Indigenous traditions and frontier life:

• An intertribal village: Representing the Chickasaw, Kiowa, Navajo, and other tribal nations, with structures and cultural context drawn from each community’s actual traditions.
• A railroad depot: Exploring the role of the railroad in the transformation of the frontier West.
• A trading post: Recreating the exchange economy at the heart of early western commerce.
• A prairie schooner wagon: For climbing, exploring, and understanding the scale and experience of the overland journey west.
• A sod house: Showing how settlers built homes from the materials of the treeless Great Plains.
• A Puebloan cliff dwelling: Introducing visitors to the architectural traditions of the Southwest’s Indigenous peoples.
• A Kiowa tipi: An authentic recreation of the portable dwelling central to Plains Indian culture.
• Hands-on activities: Grinding corn, weaving, dodging a geyser, and many other tactile experiences drawn from the daily life of western communities.
• A playground and waterfall: For open play and exploration in a naturally landscaped outdoor setting.

Liichokoshkomo’ is included with general museum admission and represents a genuine advance in how major institutions can honor Indigenous cultures while creating experiences that are both educational and genuinely joyful for children and adults alike.

The Cowboy: An Immersive Journey

The museum’s newest signature experience is The Cowboy: An Immersive Journey — a bold, 360-degree environment that surrounds visitors with the landscapes, stories, and spirit of the American West through larger-than-life projections, sweeping soundscapes, and historic imagery. The experience brings the story of the cowboy to life at a sensory scale that no conventional gallery can achieve, immersing visitors in the open range, the cattle drive, and the frontier in a way that feels physically present rather than historically remote. The Immersive Journey is available as an add-on to general museum admission (see admission pricing below) and is shown in hourly seatings. VIP options are available for those who want priority access and exclusive memorabilia.

Annual Events: Celebrating the Living West

The Prix de West Invitational Exhibition

Held each June, the Prix de West Invitational Exhibition brings together over 90 of the country’s leading contemporary Western artists for the most prestigious juried exhibition in Western art. More than 250 paintings and sculptures are exhibited, representing the full range of contemporary Western artistic expression. The Prix de West purchase — the work the museum acquires for its permanent collection each year — is one of the most coveted distinctions in the field. The exhibition draws collectors, artists, and art enthusiasts from across the country and is the social and artistic highlight of the Oklahoma City cultural calendar each summer.

The Western Heritage Awards

Held each April, the Western Heritage Awards are the Oscars of western culture: a star-studded ceremony honoring the year’s finest achievements in Western film, literature, music, and television, alongside inductions into the museum’s halls of fame. The event draws Hollywood actors, country music stars, authors, and rodeo legends to Oklahoma City for an evening that celebrates both the historical West and its living cultural legacy.

The Chuck Wagon Gathering & Children’s Cowboy Festival

The Chuck Wagon Gathering & Children’s Cowboy Festival is one of the museum’s most beloved annual events — a family-friendly celebration of cowboy cooking and western traditions held each spring on the museum’s beautiful grounds. Competing chuck wagon crews serve up authentic cowboy fare while demonstrations, musical performances, and activities for children bring the working cowboy tradition to life for all ages. It is one of the most genuinely festive events on Oklahoma City’s annual calendar.

Dining and Shopping at the Museum

The Museum Grill

The Museum Grill is open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and offers a comfortable lunch option without requiring visitors to leave the museum campus. The Grill’s menu reflects the western hospitality theme of the institution with hearty American fare. Reservations are not required for standard dining.

The Persimmon Hill Museum Store

The museum’s Persimmon Hill Store offers an exceptional selection of western-themed gifts, jewelry, apparel, home décor, art books, prints, and collectibles — with merchandise inspired by current and permanent exhibitions alongside a curated selection of western lifestyle goods. The store offers free gift wrapping and is a destination in itself for travelers looking for something genuinely distinctive to bring home from Oklahoma City.

The Museum and Route 66: Persimmon Hill Overlooks the Mother Road

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s connection to Route 66 is both literal and thematic. The museum sits atop Persimmon Hill, overlooking the old Route 66 corridor through northeast Oklahoma City — the same corridor that carried millions of travelers past this patch of Oklahoma landscape on their way from Chicago to Los Angeles. The spirit of the American West that the museum preserves is inseparable from the spirit of the road that carried Americans into that West: Route 66 was, at its deepest level, a road about westward movement, opportunity, and the myth of the frontier — all themes that animate every exhibit and artifact in the museum’s extraordinary collection.

For travelers exploring Route 66 through Oklahoma City, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is the most culturally substantial stop in the city — a world-class museum that deepens every traveler’s understanding of the landscape, the people, and the mythology they’re crossing. It pairs perfectly with Oklahoma City’s Route 66 corridor stops, including the beloved Milk Bottle Grocery, the Gold Dome, and the city’s many neon-lit vintage landmarks from the highway’s mid-century golden era.

Continuing Your Oklahoma Route 66 Journey

Oklahoma City sits at the heart of Oklahoma’s 432-mile Route 66 corridor — the state that holds more drivable miles of original Route 66 than any other. East of Oklahoma City, the corridor passes through the Round Barn in Arcadia, the Rock Cafe in Stroud (the diner that inspired Pixar’s Cars), the Route 66 Interpretive Center in Chandler, and northeast toward Tulsa, the Blue Whale of Catoosa, and the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore. West of Oklahoma City, the highway runs through the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum in Clinton and on to the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City before crossing into Texas.

Climate and the Best Time to Visit

Oklahoma City experiences a humid subtropical climate with four distinct seasons. Spring (March–May) and fall (September–November) offer the most comfortable weather for exploring the museum’s outdoor spaces — the Liichokoshkomo’ area, the gardens, and the scenic hilltop grounds of Persimmon Hill. Spring is Oklahoma’s severe weather season, so travelers should monitor forecasts from late March through June. Summer is hot, with temperatures regularly exceeding 90°F, but the museum’s fully air-conditioned galleries make it an ideal warm-weather destination. The museum is open year-round except major holidays.

Practical Tips for Visiting the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

• Address: 1700 Northeast 63rd Street, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73111
• Phone: (405) 478-2250
• Website: nationalcowboymuseum.org
• Hours: Monday–Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thursday and Friday 10 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sunday noon–5 p.m. The Museum Grill is open Monday–Saturday 11 a.m.–2 p.m.
• Admission: General Admission (all galleries): Adults $25, Seniors and Military $20, Students/Children 6–17 $15, Children 5 and under free. Add-on tickets available for The Cowboy: An Immersive Journey. Discounts available for AAA members, museum members, Blue Star Military families, Oklahoma teachers, and foster families. Check the museum website for current pricing and discount programs.
• Parking: Free parking is available on the museum campus, including accessible parking near the entrance.
• Allow enough time: Budget a minimum of 2–3 hours for a satisfying visit. A full day — including The Cowboy: An Immersive Journey, Liichokoshkomo’, the fine art galleries, Prosperity Junction, and lunch at the Museum Grill — will reward the time.
• Photography: Photography is permitted for private, non-commercial use in designated areas only. No tripods, monopods, bipods, or selfie sticks. Drones are not permitted. Check signage in each gallery.
• Bags: All bags larger than 15 x 9 x 10 inches must be checked at the Guest Services Desk. A complimentary coat check is available.
• Sketching: Visitors are invited to sketch throughout the galleries and grounds using pencil, crayon, pastel, charcoal, or digital surfaces. Sketching materials are available from the Visitor Services Desk on a first-come basis.
• Weekend tours: Guided Signature Tours are offered on weekends — an excellent way to experience the collection with expert context from museum educators.
• Events: The Prix de West exhibition (June), the Western Heritage Awards (April), and the Chuck Wagon Gathering (spring) are all worth planning your visit around. Check the museum’s website for the current events calendar.
• Family planning: Liichokoshkomo’ and Prosperity Junction are the most family-friendly spaces and can anchor a visit for younger travelers. Adventure Days, Kids Take Over events, and daily Discovery Table activities make the museum excellent for children of all ages.
• First Americans Museum: The nearby First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City is complementary to the Cowboy Museum’s Native American collections. Joint tickets are available and the two museums together provide one of the most comprehensive engagements with Native American history and culture anywhere in the country.

Final Thoughts: Why the Cowboy Museum Is Essential

There is no other institution in the United States quite like the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. It is not just a museum about cowboys — it is a museum about America’s defining mythology, the stories we have told ourselves about the West for 150 years, and the real people, cultures, and landscapes that mythology was built upon and sometimes obscured. The fine art collection is world-class by any measure. Prosperity Junction is one of the most effective immersive history environments in the country. The Native American galleries are among the most respectful and comprehensive in an American museum. And the Prix de West and Western Heritage Awards keep the living culture of the West vital and present.

For travelers on Route 66 through Oklahoma, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is the single stop that most fully contextualizes the landscape they’re driving through: the land, the people, the cattle drives and homestead runs and migrations that shaped it, and the myths that Route 66 travelers have been carrying with them ever since they first pointed their cars west and followed the Mother Road toward California.

Nearby Oklahoma City Route 66 Highlights

• Oklahoma City on Route 66 — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to Oklahoma City’s Route 66 corridor, from the Milk Bottle Grocery to the Lake Overholser Bridge.
• Milk Bottle Grocery, Oklahoma City — One of Route 66’s most beloved roadside oddities: a tiny triangular building with a giant milk bottle on the roof.
• Gold Dome, Oklahoma City — A stunning 1958 geodesic dome, one of the first in the U.S. built for commercial use, now a National Register landmark on Route 66.
• Round Barn, Arcadia — The 1898 Route 66 landmark built from Kellyville sandstone, just east of Oklahoma City on the Mother Road.
• Rock Cafe, Stroud — The legendary Route 66 diner that inspired Pixar’s Cars, open since 1939.
• Route 66 Interpretive Center, Chandler — An immersive Route 66 museum inside a 1937 WPA sandstone armory.
• Oklahoma Route 66 Museum, Clinton — Oklahoma’s official state museum of the Mother Road, with decade-by-decade immersive exhibits.
• National Route 66 Museum, Elk City — The all-eight-states Route 66 museum in western Oklahoma, with Myrtle the kachina and the famous pink Cadillac drive simulator.
• Blue Whale of Catoosa — The 80-foot smiling fiberglass whale, one of Route 66’s most joyful roadside landmarks.
• Will Rogers Memorial Museum, Claremore — Honoring Oklahoma’s most beloved son, the Cherokee cowboy for whom the Will Rogers Highway is named.
• Route 66 in Oklahoma — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to Oklahoma’s 432-mile Route 66 corridor.