Old Cowtown Museum

On the banks of the Arkansas River in Wichita, this open-air living-history museum recreates the cattle-town era of the 1870s with dozens of original and reconstructed buildings, from a saloon and jail to a working farm and blacksmith shop. Costumed interpreters demonstrate frontier trades and stage occasional gunfight reenactments. The museum interprets Wichita's rise as a cow town at the end of the Chisholm Trail. Visitors walk dirt streets between the buildings, gaining a sense of the daily rhythms of a Kansas frontier community.