So this is why we came to Oklohomah. I just found their website through a general search and had no idea what it was like.

It is set is 34 acres of manicured gardens, with waterfalls and streams.  The buildings themselves are imposing.

There were lots of paintings from the times, plus displays like clothing, boots, hats, saddles, spurs, bridles, barbed wire, then dioramas of early life.  There was one gallery devoted to rodeos and another to cowboys of the small and silver screen.

The real John Wayne is on the left.

You are thinking Annie Oakley and  Buffalo Bob?  There were many full or over size statues both inside and out.  One was of two settlers, on horseback, facing each other and shaking hands, symbolising the neighbour helping neighbour and how a man's handshake was his bond.

This is a museum started around 1965 by white descendants, but the displays acknowledge the Indian experience, being forced onto reservations, and has many magnificent Indian displays, in particular this full size, full length feathered headdress.  There is also mention of black cowboys and native Indian cowboys and Mexican cowboys.  In the rodeo gallery was a section devoted to women.  One short film acknowledged women worked as hard as men in settling the Wild West but Hollywood mainly assigned them minor roles.  But it did say many of the Westerns were directed by Easterners who romanticised the era without any real knowledge of what really happened.

An entire Main Street of a fictional town was displayed, with railroad trucks, doctor, blacksmith, church, stores, and of course a saloon bar.

The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum was probably not what I expected.  But it was a world class facility, with so much variety, so much to wander along and see, so much information, all displayed so professionally. We were there at ten o'clock opening and left just before the five o'clock closing.  So what does that tell y'all?