Day 3: National Ranching Heritage Museum

Written by: Abigail and Olivia

While touring the National Ranching Heritage Museum, we started with a tour through the outside area where we learned about the different houses, defensive structures, and other aspects of the ranches of the past. I'd like to tell you a little about a few of the buildings we learned about:

Los Corralitos was a defensive building created to fight off attack. It was around 30 inches thick with no windows, just a few holes for gun fire on each side of the building. 

El Capote was a log cabin that had generations living in it with the last person living in it during the 1900’s. 

Hedwig's Hill was a pre civil war house that some German people created and people could rent out or sleep on the property for however long needed. 

The next stop was the Towell House and that was a 2-story house with multiple defensive measures and one of the first fridges that was created using thick walls and water that was constantly running to keep it cool and they used air flow to control the temperature levels in the building to keep everything cold enough that it wouldn't spoil. These were often times called "Spring Houses".

The Barton House was built in 1909 where he named the town after himself. He wanted to build a rail road track from Barton to Lubbock but unfortunate for him, it was made in a different town. 

They had a mail man who would ride on horses into town in order to deliver mail to a mail house where the cowboys would go and pick up their mail when they had time.

It was very interesting to hear that they used trains to transport animals and had a double deck to carry small animals or they could raise the deck to carry larger animals. 

With that they had a sheep farm to house sick sheep and treat them while keeping them away from other animals spreading the disease. It was very common back in the day with screw worms which is now occurring today but not as commonly. 

There also were many displays inside the museum

  
This tour allowed me to explore the history from back in the day that have had some impact on today’s life. This was definitely a great learning opportunity to see what happened back in the day and comparing it to the changes that have helped us today. If you are in the area please check out the National Ranching Heritage Museum for a great learning experience.