{"id":138,"date":"2016-02-20T23:09:35","date_gmt":"2016-02-21T05:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/?p=138"},"modified":"2016-02-22T12:44:41","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T18:44:41","slug":"a-visit-to-the-panhandle-plains-historical-museum-pt-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/a-visit-to-the-panhandle-plains-historical-museum-pt-1\/","title":{"rendered":"A Visit to the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Pt. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20160213_123853\"<\/a>Last weekend, my son had an academic competition in Canyon, Texas. The competition was held on the campus of West Texas A&M University<\/a>. I went along to cheer him and his team on, and while I was there I took advantange of some time when the kids weren’t competing to slip over to the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum<\/a>, which is on the campus. It’s the largest historical musueum in the state, with museum being defined as a facility which houses indoor exhibits. And places like the National Ranching Heritage Center<\/a>, which has a number of reconstructed buildings, don’t fall under this definition.\"20160213_123917-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I didn’t have time to see everything. There are two floors, plus a basement. There are fossils, old cars, windmills, a frontier town, pottery, swords, natural history displays, and that’s just the basement and the ground floor. I had just gotten to the second floor and was looking at the firearm display when the teacher accompanying the students texted me to say they were leaving. So, I’m going to show you some of the things I saw in several installments. Click the photos for a larger view.<\/p>\n

This post is going to focus on what I saw of the firearm exhibit, which won’t be everything. \u00a0I snapped this group of pictures in a hurry since we were leaving, and some of them didn’t turn out quite as clear as I thought once I looked at them carefully. \u00a0I intend to go back and take my time walking through the museum at some future date and get a better set of pictures.<\/p>\n

\"20160213_140147\"<\/a>On the left is a pair of German machine guns from WWI. \u00a0They are water cooled. \u00a0There was a docent in the firearms exhibit. \u00a0He told me that originally the guns had water tanks to hold the cooling water. \u00a0As far as he knew, there were no more in existence; the museum had been attempting to find some. \u00a0The guns were in excellent condition for their age. \u00a0I don’t know if they are still in firable condition. \u00a0I took pictures of the informational cards and will post them at the end of this post for anyone who is interested.<\/p>\n

\"20160213_140248\"<\/a>This is one of my favorite weapons, a Thompson submachine gun. \u00a0They are unfortunately illegal for private citizens to own. \u00a0That doesn’t stop me from wanting one. \u00a0Yes, I’ve watched too many Depression-era ganster movies.<\/p>\n

There was one display in the firearms exhibit that I found especially interesting. \u00a0That was the British Enfield Rifles. \u00a0I took several photos of this one.<\/p>\n

\"20160213_140302\"<\/a>In 1861, James Paris Lee invented a spring-loaded column feed system for cartridge firing rifles. It was first used on the Springfield 1861 Rifled Musket. \u00a0In 1879, Lee added a bolt action in addition to the spring-loaded column-feed magazines. \u00a0This design soon became the standard for military weapons world wide. \u00a0In 1888, the British Army adopted the Lee-Metford rifle, which became the Lee-Enfield (a shortened version). \u00a0The Enfield rifles were standard British issue from 1895 to 1957.<\/p>\n

\"20160213_140411\"<\/a>Here are slightly closer views of the rifles and their evolution. \u00a0Click to enlarge. \u00a0I’ll include a shot of some of the informational cards at the end of the post. \u00a0The cards contain information about the rifle, such as the serial number of that particular weapon and the years it was used, \u00a0along with the name of the donor (if known). \u00a0\"20160213_140407\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The last display I want to show is a selection of firearms from World War I. \u00a0This particular display has both rifles and hand guns. \u00a0It was one that I thought I had more pictures of, and I almost didn’t include it because I didn’t get good shots of the cards. \u00a0But then I figured some of you might like to see it anyway.<\/p>\n

There were more displays that I didn’t get a chance to look at, such as the WWII weapons. \u00a0This was an impressive exhibit. \u00a0The docent told me they have around 200-250 guns that aren’t on display (if I’m remembering that number correctly).\"20160213_140441\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s about all of the things I’m going to say about the firearms. \u00a0The rest of the photos are details of the information in the displays.<\/p>\n

If you’re ever in the Panhandle, try to stop by and visit the museum. \u00a0Canyon is about half an hour south of Amarillo and an hour and a half north of Lubbock. \u00a0I had known of the museum for some time, but I hadn’t realized just how much was there. \u00a0As I said, I’ll be going back.<\/p>\n

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\"20160213_140345\"<\/a>\"20160213_140122\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"20160213_140042\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend, my son had an academic competition in Canyon, Texas. The competition was held on the campus of West Texas A&M University. I went along to cheer him and his team on, and while I was there I took advantange of some time when the kids weren’t competing to slip over to the Panhandle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,22],"tags":[25,24,23,26],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-firearms","category-museums","tag-british-enfield-rifles","tag-firearms","tag-panhandle-plains-historical-museum","tag-world-war-i"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P4UF-2e","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}