A Proud Heritage Saved, Texas Style

Nobody's surprised it's so big and so bold.

- JANA BOMMERSBACH

It started during a visit to a Norway museum in the 1960s, when Texas Tech University President Grover Murray wondered why he couldn’t have a similar display back home, focusing on the planet’s semi-arid regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, America’s West.

He found that Texas ranchers thought this was the best idea since sliced bread, and it was the American West piece that took off.

Today, Texas Tech University in Lubbock houses the National Ranching Heritage Center that tells the story of ranching in the American West over the past 200 years.

In 1977, the center hired the first staff, and got a two-fer: historian and archaeologist William Curry Holden became the first director, while his wife, Frances, was the chief fundraiser in the early days.