Frontier Times Museum — Attraction in Bandera

A wonderfully quirky museum. We went in expecting a collection about frontier times and the history of Bandera, which it has, but there are a lot of odd items that don't really relate but are interesting on their own. As the woman at the front said, J. Marvin Hunter, the founder, had "a hard time saying no" to things people wanted to donate to him. There's a collection of 400 bells from around the world, for example, that have nothing much to do with the Texas frontier or Bandera, but they're really cool. Though it's not a large museum (four good-sized rooms), it's a bit overwhelming, with so many fascinating things to look at. Took me a while to adjust to everything, but I came away feeling like I'd seen a whole heck of a lot of amazing stuff. They have an excellent collection of books on Texas frontier and Bandera history. And copies of Hunter's Frontier Times magazine for purchase. Deserves multiple visits. And I plan...

My 8 and 11 year old grandchildren really enjoyed the Museum, and Grandpa had a blast! While walking through a very nice collection of things that were created to make life easier, then explaining to the grandbabies things like, yes, that is a telephone that hangs on the wall!! We were able too interact with nearly every item in the Museum, because of the great idea of a single sheet of paper,.... A scavenger hunt list! What an idea!! An hour and a half later, after completing the hunt, they received a small gift, but the real gift was all the fun they had learning how things have changed, and how much fun it was explaining some of the things that were maybe 100 years old, and they enjoyed every minute of it. I'm sure we will revisit soon, and I thank all who work there to bring this treat of...

I've literally waited my whole life to go to this museum. I used to see signs for it when I was a kid back in the 70s and we were driving through Bandera, but I never got to go. Well, I finally got my chance. This is one of those delightful small town museums full of all kinds of eclectic stuff. It's very nicely laid out, and much of it is hands on (which makes the 'Collection of 400 Bells' exhibit much more interesting). It was an educational experience. I learned a lot of history about the area: the Silesian settlers, for example. I thought I was pretty smart about local history, but I see I'm not because I had no idea about those Silesians. The staff is really friendly, the cost was minimal, and it was about a 90 minute tour for us. It's...