New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum

Description:

• This 47-acre interactive museum brings to life the 3,000-year history of farming, ranching, and rural living in New Mexico. It's housed within a huge structure that's designed to look like a hacienda-style barn, with a U-shaped courtyard in back and exhibits surrounding it on expansive grounds. The museum displays such relics as a 1937 John Deere tractor and a number of examples of how ranchers "make do," ingeniously combining tools such as a tractor seat with a milk barrel to come up with a chair. Visitors can watch a cow being milked, stroll along corrals filled with livestock, enjoy several gardens, and drop by the blacksmith shop. Annual events at the museum are the La Fiesta de San Ysidro in May and Cowboy Days the third weekend in October.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Highly Recommended 2010