Check out our feature from YOLO TXTV, “Long Live the Longhorn”
Welcome to the Butler Longhorn Museum! Feel free to explore the website, or just come visit us and see what we’re all about!
The Butler Longhorn Museum & Educational Center highlights the Butler cattle bloodline, while exhibiting the history of the Longhorn Breed. The Museum documents the rich multicultural heritage of the region through farming and ranch history. Western history, art, and science are demonstrated and preserved throughout the Museum and Educational Center with programs focused on agriculture, Gulf Coast Heritage and Texas history.
Think of Texas, and you think of Longhorns: ponderous cattle with horns as wide as a man is tall. From the western art of Charles M. Russell to the University of Texas mascot, the Longhorn is synonymous with Texas and its long ranching history. Yet few Texans or visitors to this state realize that at the beginning of the 20th century, Longhorns were on the verge of extinction. By the mid-1920s, in fact, buffalo outnumbered Longhorns ̶ an especially remarkable statistic given that just 40 years previous, the North American Longhorn population was estimated at 40,0 00 head. Today, the Longhorn is alive and well thanks to the efforts of six pioneer breeders and a few far-sighted federal employees, who refused to allow these animals to become extinct. The Butler Longhorn Museum tells the story of this amazing comeback, and in doing so, tells a compelling chapter in the story of the American West.