O'Donnell Museum

The O'Donnell Heritage Museum is a local history repository in O'Donnell in Lynn County in West Texas. A part of the museum includes a room of exhibits on the actor Dan Blocker, who portrayed the Hoss Cartwright character for thirteen years on NBC's Bonanza. Blocker was reared in O'Donnell though born in DeKalb in East Texas. Because of the Blocker room and memorabilia, the facility is sometimes called "The Dan Blocker Museum." O'Donnell, located 45 miles (70 km) south of Lubbock, began in 1910 as a stop on the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railroad, a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, and is named for rail promoter Tom J. O'Donnell. Numerous western communities are named for railroad men, among them Gallup, New Mexico, and Denver, Colorado. In 1911, L. G. Phillips opened the first business in O'Donnell, the first fully automatic cotton gin in North America. The gin was owned by the Farmers Cooperative.The museum hence contains mostly early 20th century exhibits, but some items from the late 19th century found in old homes and attics were donated to the collection.