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 paper trail runs from Hunter's 1927 magazine to the relics readers sent and the limestone museum he built on Delightful Hill. Inside, shelves, walls, and odd objects keep Bandera's cowboy and frontier history tied to a real collection.