Current Exhibits

El Camino Real de los Tejas and Nacogdoches: 
History in Every Direction

The history of Nacogdoches is tied to the Camino Real. Roads are agents of change; affecting settlement patterns and economic activity; bringing colonization and cultural exchange. The trails that connected the Caddo with distant trading partners also brought Europeans to East Texas; first from the south and then from the east.This well-established road led Antonio Gil Y’Barbo away from his ranch near Lobanillo Creek on the order of the Spanish Crown, and later, back to the abandoned Nacogdoches’ mission site in 1779. Along this road,Y’Barbo built his house that later became a popular trading post. This exhibit explores the people who traveled the corridor of trails and made history in every direction.

Fabricating Fashion

Survival for the inhabitants of early Nacogdoches depended on three ingredients: food, clothing, and shelter. The exhibit, Fabricating Fashion, surveys the skills, tools, and traditions that shaped clothing and textile arts in East Texas. On display is a late 1800s four-harness counterbalance loom used by the Watters family from Alto, Texas. Try your hand at embroidery or carding cotton, and celebrate textile arts traditions from hand spinning to weaving to quilting.