The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City (must see)

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum features more than 28,000 Western and American Indian art works and artifacts. The facility also has the world's most extensive collection of American rodeo, photographs, barbed wire, saddlery, and early rodeo trophies. Museum collections focus on preserving and interpreting the heritage of the American West. The museum becomes an art gallery during the annual Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition and Sale each June. The Prix de West Artists sell original works of art as a fund raiser for the Museum.

It was established in 1955 as the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Museum, from an idea proposed by Chester A. Reynolds, to honor the cowboy and his era. The museum encompasses more than 200,000 square feet (19,000 m2) of display space, the museum's collection includes over 2,000 works of western art, the "William S. and Ann Atherton Art of the American West Gallery". There is a 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) exhibit space which contains landscapes, portraits and sculptures by 19th and 20th-century artists. The Museum also houses Prosperity Junction, a 14,000-square-foot (1,300 m2) authentic turn-of-the-century Western prairie town.

Visitors can stroll the streets, peek in some of the store windows and actually walk into some of the fully furnished buildings. The town comes alive with historical figures once a year during the Museum's annual holiday open house, "A Night Before Christmas".