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EXHIBITS

The museum is open Wednesday through Saturdays from 10AM-4PM.
 
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Exhibits

Medicine in 

The Big Thicket

1880-1920

Medical practices of the 1800's when doctors used plants and herbs, as well as medication.

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Pioneer Guns

"Anyone can shoot a deer, but it takes a man to shoot a varmit."  Ben Lilly, Bear and Lion Hunter circa 1900.

Antique guns from southeast Texas for hunters and lawmen.

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Ghost Towns of SE Texas

The Timber Boom (1880-1940) and the Oil Book (1900-1930) has left dozens of ghost towns in SE Texas. Learn more about them.

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1820 Flatboat

Visit a life-size 1820 Flatboat, built inside the main gallery and learn the story of their use in settling East Texas.

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Ice Wagon

A 1902 Studebaker wagon in front of a 1920's house illustrates the ice delivery wagons in Silsbee 1900-1950.

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Ice Plant Exhibit

A room in the Ice House Museum, stripped to original features, explains the  manufacture of ice in this building 95 years ago. 

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Predators of The Big Thicket

Before 1920, predators prowled this area in enormous quantities. Bear, Wolves, Cougars, Panthers. 

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1621

Before America and before Texas, there was a forest, a culture, a people unlike anything we ever knew.  Spanish Explorers explored and we evolved....

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Connie Bates: an Artist's Perspective

Sketches of early Silsbee exhibited with photos of the sites today showing their locations.

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Quilt Exhibit

The exquisite quilts of Melinda Stanton photographed by Michelle Esclovan in two vintage homes. 

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Spellbound by The Big Thicket

Award-winning local photographer Michelle Esclovan brings the Big Thicket to life in breath-taking photography.

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Peach Tree

Village

John Henry Kirby was born in this beautiful and historic corner of SE Texas.

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Old Silsbee

Silsbee was created as a result of a big Business Deal between John Henry Kirby and Nathaniel Silsbee. See how it came about, and what it was like.

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Out of the Shadows

Original tintype photography from 1875-1900 of people from Southeast Texas are exhibited next to a life-size, Photoshopped enlargement which brings  the faded images to life and "out of the shadows."

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The Kirby Parlor

The Timber Boom (1880-1940) and the Oil Book (1900-1930) has left dozens of ghost towns in SE Texas. Learn more about them.

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1920 Kitchen

An authentic 1920 kitchen, with an icebox, wood burning stove, possum belly cabinet, tools, sink and utilities, housed in the 1920's house behind the Ice Wagon.

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Programming made possible with funding from Humanities Texas and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as a part of the Federal ARP Act.

This project is funded in part by the B. A. & E.W. Steinhagen Benevolent Trust through the Southeast Texas Arts Council

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