Montana Cowboys Association Museum & Bar - Great Falls

The Cowboys Museum is one of the many projects the Montana Cowboys Association has undertaken to perpetuate the historical importance of our western heritage. Built in the late 1930's by the National Youth Administration and opened in 1941, the Cowboys Museum is an authentic log cabin with double fireplaces and replicas of hitching posts from Montana's frontier days.

Inside it is filled with Old West relics. Actual items with which cowboys, stockmen, and pioneers worked with are on display, including rawhide rope, branding irons and ox yokes.

Other exhibits include a lady's intricately fashioned side-saddle, a trick rope saddle, numerous Indian artefact's, and a Kimball-Reed organ, brought down river from St. Louis to Fort Benton, Montana in 1876.

Gun collectors would be in awe at the ages of some of the guns on display, including an old muzzleloading shotgun, a flintlock rifle, and Civil War bayonets.

The Cowboys Museum also has its share of famed exhibits: a pair of spurs given to Jack Kennedy in 1890 by Tom Horn, the subject of the Steve McQueen movie 'Tom Horn', a rivet set made by Kid Curry, local artist Charlie Russell's black boots (curled from wear), Russell's bed tarp and pictures of his funeral procession also capture a visitor's eye.

The list goes on and on with over 500 mementos of a romantic era in our nation's history and an integral part of Montana's past.