Raton Museum

Raton Museum

Northeast region of New MexicoWhere the Historic Downtown Walking Tour will show you the buildings that make up Raton's History, the Raton Museum will sweep you back into that history by putting you in touch with the very items folks in these parts used in their daily lives as far back as 1800.

The museum, created by the Raton Historical Society in 1939, has shown its vast collection in numerous buildings around the city. It has occupied its current building on First Street since the late 1960s.

The oldest item within a collection of hundreds of pieces - some recognizable, some obscure and thought-provoking - is a wooden clarinet crafted in 1830.

Other curiosities from Raton's past are nearly as old: pianos, pump organs, a wood stove, livestock tools gleaned from local ranches and railroad artifacts dating from the 1880s to modern times.

Items that will be explained graciously and thoroughly by museum curator Roger Sanchez include a messenger stick that train depot workers used to transfer messages to train conductors; a dynamite detonator box with a push-handle like in the cartoons; a large selection of old typewriters and adding machines, a harp from 1847; and photo boards that tell the story of life in seven area coal-mining camps.

Many Ratonians participated in our country's wars, and the museum houses artifacts - uniforms, medals, letters, weapons - from the Civil War and both world wars. There's a shell casing from the battleship U.S.S. New Mexico and a photograph of the 1943 launching of the Navy submarine The Raton.

There's all this and lots more at the Raton Museum, where relics whisper of the past; where Raton's history has a permanent home.