The Museum of South Texas History is located in Edinburg, Texas. It features exhibits on the history of the Rio Grande Valley, as well as the rest of South Texas.
The museum now owns more than a city block, located on the square in Edinburg. The Museum opened in 1970 as the Hidalgo County Historical Museum. It was originally housed in Hidalgo County’s Old Jail, a Texas National Landmark, built in 1910. The Museum has since expanded to three main buildings, and gives visitors a full understanding of regional history from prehistoric times and following through to the 20th century.
Collections include a giant prehistoric mosasaur and ice age mammoth, and follow to Coahuiltecan Indians, the Spanish exploration and colonization, the Mexican War, the U.S Civil War, the Steamboat era, and the Cattle Kingdom.
In November 2007, the final installment to the exhibits was unveiled, River Crossroads. The final stop on the tour, Crossroads takes the visitor through the prominence of the “Citrus Era,” the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution, and ends the journey with most recent area history.
The Margaret H. McAllen Memorial Archives house the Valley’s largest collection of historical photographs, plus documents and maps, available for research in the expanded quarters.
The Museum Store offers the largest selection of South Texas history books and memorabilia in the Rio Grande Valley.
Famous quotes containing the words museum of, museum, south, texas and/or history:
“A Museum of fetishes would give special attention to the history of underwear.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A friend and I flew south with our children. During the week we spent together I took off my shoes, let down my hair, took apart my psyche, cleaned the pieces, and put them together again in much improved condition. I feel like a car that’s just had a tune-up. Only another woman could have acted as the mechanic.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
“Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; Caesar’s history will paint out Caesar.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)