A Whole New Frontier: Frontier Texas adds new features to museum

ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) – A local source of Old West history is turning new pages with updates and a new exhibit. Frontier Texas invited the public out to showcase some new features that the museum has to offer. One of those additions is a new exhibit hall, and Frontier Texas’s executive director, Jeff Salmon, explained how it will bring some added variety to the museum.

“So, this space is designed to be able to allow our museum for the first time to really have temporary changing exhibits on an ongoing basis. Myself and our board have determined that we’re going to try to host about two to three exhibits in this space every year,” Salmon shared.

Other additions include a renewed lobby area with longhorn cattle skulls from the official State of Texas Longhorn herd that’ve died from natural causes, additional parking for museum goers, and a conversion of their open-air pavilion to a closed one to give visiting schools an additional space for learning tours. A point that the co-chair of the Abilene Chamber of Commerce’s Red Coats, Ashley Creager, said will help boost economic growth in Abilene. 

“It has a major economic impact on Abilene with the tourism that does come in. It’s not just Abilene that benefits from it. All of the surrounding and rural areas always bring their school kids over here to tour Frontier Texas, which is great to bring even more money into the economy. This renovation was much needed,” Creager said.

Another key improvement at Frontier Texas was the addition of an archive room, designed to better catalog and preserve the museum’s artifacts. This new space also creates ideal conditions for hosting traveling exhibits, expanding the museum’s offerings. Additionally, Frontier Texas plans to engage the public by inviting input and ideas for future exhibits in the new exhibit hall.

“We as an institution are really interested in hearing from the community about topics that they would love to see, and we like for that to come more organically from our community saying, Hey, we have a story that we think would be fascinating and other people would enjoy. Can we create an exhibit together based on that?” Salmon shared.

The total cost for the improvements at Frontier Texas was roughly $4.2 million.