The latest exhibit has opened in the Front Door Gallery at the Finney County Historical Museum, featuring more than a dozen antique rifles, shotguns and muskets.
Entitled “Aiming True,” the display is available for viewing during regular summer exhibit hours of 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sundays. The museum is located at 403 S. Fourth in Garden City’s Finnup Park, adjacent to the pedestrian gate at Lee Richardson Zoo, and admission is free.
The firearms include a Winchester 1873 lever action rifle, known as “the gun that won the West,” a Sharps Army carbine of Civil War vintage and a pair of U.S. military-issue Wickham muskets dating to the 1820s. The guns, all from the museum’s artifact collection, also range from a Berthier carbine of the type used by French troops during World War I to a World War II Murata rifle carried by the Japanese Imperial Army.
In addition, the exhibit features a trio of antique shotguns, a battlefield machine gun built for German forces in World War I and additional pieces. There are also artifacts related to the weapons, as well as list of the most significant firearms of the Old West.
The Front Door Gallery is located just inside in the museum’s main display hall. The eight by 14-foot gallery hosts approximately six changing displays and collections each year. The firearms display follows a now-ended exhibit of historic quilts and a previous collection of items and images from the Santa Fe Trail Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
Visitors may see various other long-term and changing exhibits too, ranging from “My Place in Time,” a 19th Century kitchen, “Take Stock in Finney County,” “Spirit of the Plains” and “Garden City Then and Now” to “Celebrate Kansas” and “Buffalo Jones, Last of the Plainsmen.” The museum gift shop operates simultaneously with the exhibits, and the historic 1884 William Fulton House is open 2-4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays just southwest of the museum inside the zoo.
Information is available at 620-272-3664 and museum office hours run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.
