Tinkertown Museum
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Tinkertown Museum reinvigorates my belief in the America that is truly great, not “great again” (ugh). It’s a vestige of the dwindling great American tradition of roadside attractions, and boy, is it a doozy!
Ross Ward worked for years as a showpainter for traveling carnivals before settling down with his family in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains to create a forever home for the enormous hand-carved Western town he’d spent years creating. They built a bottle house and later added an amazingly intricate animated circus to the Western town as well as Ross Ward’s other unique works of art and collections of curios.
Ross passed away in the early 2000s, but the museum is still run by his widow and others who have many stories to tell.
There is definitely something magical about Tinkertown and I always recommend visitors check it out. It’s a real bargain as well, at $6.00 a head as of this writing.