Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum

The museum beside Interstate 35 in Waco is not only a place to look at old badges. Its research center holds more than three hundred thousand items, including the personal and case files of Texas Rangers going back generations. More than three thousand researchers use it each year. Some are tracing ancestors. Some are writing books or building movies and television shows. And the Rangers themselves have come back through the door, using the collection in the investigation of cold cases. The paperwork went in as history and came back out as evidence. The gallery side of the building keeps more than fourteen thousand artifacts, among them twenty five hundred historic firearms shown in rotation, Ranger badges and credentials, and items connected to the nineteen thirties outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Anything donated here stops belonging to the donor. It becomes the property of the people of Texas, held in trust by the City of Waco.