The Buckhorn Saloon and Museum

Image of inside the saloon from Buckhorn's websiteDeep in the heart of San Antonio, Texas you'll find the Buckhorn Hall of Horns (and fins and feathers and monstrous births and wax figures of American history).  Albert Friedrich opened the saloon in 1881 and it has been in continuous operation since.  In the early days, the collection of horns grew mightily with Friedrich's unusual offer: "Bring in your deer antlers and you can trade them for a shot of whiskey or a beer."  

When prohibition muzzled the saloon in 1920, Friedrich switched official titles: now he welcomed patrons to the Buckhorn Curio Museum.  wink wink.  And when Friedrich's competitor, Billy Keilman, closes shop a few years later, Friedrich acquires Keilman's Horn Palace. Could this be the world's largest collection of horns and antlers.

The other museum galleries slowly were added - the Hall of Fins in 1964, the Hall of Feathers in 1973, a collection of rarites included several two-headed creatures and siamese births sometime after that - and pushed the annual number of visitors to a spectacular 400,000.   After being held by several brewing companies since the 1950s, Mary Friedrich Rogers - Albert Friedrich's granddaughter - and her husband, Wallace Rogers, bought back the collection, and on December 22, 1998, the new Buckhorn Saloon & Museum opened on Houston Street - a few blocks from the original 1881 location. 

As advertised on their website, the Buckhorn museum "don't like the idea that museums have to be stuffy, quiet places. How are you going to get excited about that! Get yourself a drink at our over 120 year-old bar and come on in! Ooh and ahh at the sites, get close to our world record holding trophy mounts, see our collection of oddities!"

read all more the museum and its history: http://www.buckhornmuseum.com/index.html