The Range Riders Museum

(Miles City, MT) Hi 90 Lo 56 – Today we drove into downtown Miles City to check out the Range Riders Museum. (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)



The museum is housed in a group of low buildings, and was founded in 1939.




The main building has several rooms with display after display of all types of items from the pioneer days of the 1800’s, including saddles, chaps, household items, knives, cameras, watches, boots and clothing, and you name it.





One whole room contained old tools of every kind.



There was a display of boots worn by famous Montana cowboys.



Along with their hats.


After seeing some of these sweaty hats I didn’t feel so bad about wearing some of my old ball caps.


This display had an incredible number of women’s hats. They were very colorful.




This diorama showed what a lady’s sewing room would have looked like in the 1800’s.


One exhibit that surprised us was this display of dinosaur bones. Apparently there have been a lot of dinosaur remains dug up in Montana.



How about all these types of barbed wire. Believe it or not each one had a name.




With all the cattle ranches in Montana, cattle brands are a big deal. This display showed many of the historical brands from this area.


And the branding irons.


Of course, you would expect a large number of firearms in a museum in the west and we weren’t disappointed. This is just a very small portion of the large room that contained the firearms collection donated by a guy named Bert Clark.



There were hundreds of long guns, hand guns, knives, and native American bows and arrows. This display of arrowhead was amazing!



Some of the handguns dated to the 1700’s, like these old flintlock pistols.


Many of the firearms were found buried around the countryside, and were displayed in the condition they were in when they were found. Several were found on the Little Big Horn battlefield, which is not that far away from here.





One of the other buildings was an original pioneer house that was moved to this site.




And there was also an original schoolhouse. It also was moved to this site.


A chuck wagon and stage coach sat in the yard.


The largest building was a barn that had dozens of old buggies, cars, and other larger machine items. They covered the time period of the 1800’s up through the mid-1900’s.









These old fire engines were pretty neat.




Around the top of the walls were many items that wouldn’t fit on the floor.


This old chair was very unique looking, with all the animal horns on it.



One thing we sure didn’t expect to see was an iron lung. Those of us of a certain age remember these.



And for the life of me I can’t figure out what this thing is. All I know is it’s electrical, and it has over 20 clamp-on electrical connectors at the ends of all those wires.





Anybody?

The Range Riders Museum is a must see if you’re ever in this part of the country. It’s open from April 1 to November 1. We always love to see how everyone lived in the “old days”, and it always makes us thankful for the modern conveniences we have today.

Tomorrow we’re moving to North Dakota, our 48th and final state in our five-year (and counting) full time journey. (We have no plans to tow Tumbleweed to Alaska.) We’re looking forward to adding the last state sticker to our map.