Frontier Times Museum Grew From One Printer's Collection

Frontier Times Museum started with paper, stories, and things people mailed in. J. Marvin Hunter moved to Bandera in 1921, bought the Bandera New Era, and began publishing Frontier Times magazine in 1927.

Readers sent their own frontier stories, then relics and keepsakes from the Old West. The museum says Hunter's newspaper office filled up, and he began planning a building for the collection.

The Frontier Times Museum opened on May 20, 1933. The building became part of the story, with stone, fossils, petrified wood, crystal, and other native materials worked into the walls.

The museum helps Bandera's cowboy identity feel less like a slogan. It gives the story shelves, walls, odd objects, and a founder whose printing presses helped sell the town as a place people would come to see. That matters on a county page because it turns local branding into a real institution with a paper trail. It also gives visitors a reason to slow down past the shop windows and read the older town behind the brand.