The idea started in 1966, when Texas Tech president Grover E. Murray asked a committee whether the university could build an outdoor museum about ranching. The first building was moved onto the ground in 1970, a dozen were restored by 1974, and the center opened officially in 1976, the Bicentennial year, with a trail drive arriving at the gate. Willard B. Robinson, a Tech architecture professor, directed most of the moves and restorations.
The buildings now stand in the 19-acre Foy Proctor Historical Park, and they run in rough order from the late 1780s to the 1950s. Each one came from somewhere specific. The Jowell House of 1872-73 from Palo Pinto County is a small stone fortress with rifle slits and an outside ladder to the upper floor. The Matador half-dugout of 1890 came from the Matador Ranch in Dickens County, the 6666 barn from Guthrie, the Waggoner commissary from Wichita County, a box-and-strip house from Martin County and the 1909 Barton House, a Victorian with a captain's walk, from Hale County. There are King Ranch shipping pens, a locomotive, the Ropes depot and several kinds of windmill.
Indoors, the galleries carry changing exhibits on ranch life and the Ranching Heritage Association's collection. The association, a nonprofit, pays for moving and caring for the buildings, and the yearly Candlelight at the Ranch opens the park by lamplight for the holidays.
The closest stops worth working into your route