Before you even enter the museum, you experience a street scene with mural paintings on the hallway walls of old Amarillo buildings. Red awnings over display windows and the front door beckon you into the pharmacy, a ‘Main Street' establishment vital to community life. The display windows serve as cases for changing exhibits; usually these are selections from recent acquisitions, but there are also special exhibits recognizing donors, National Pharmacy Week, and historical topics showcasing artifacts from the Permanent Collection.

The first room is a restored pharmacy of the early 20th century. The furniture (open shelves, display cases, soda fountain, sales counter, and pharmacist's work station) was built in England in 1898 for a Baltimore pharmacy. The shelves and cases are stocked with the patent medicines, tobacco products, and general merchandise which customers relied upon to fill their medical and personal needs. An always-full candy jar provides a treat for the well-behaved patron of any age.

Turning right from the Pharmacy Room is the Tool Room. Its exhibits consist of the tools of trade, such as mortars and pestles, suppository molds, pill rollers, balances, bottles, prescription form filing systems, and a Prohibition Era still for making ‘legal' medicinal whiskey. The various pharmacy sidelines are represented as well, including a watch repair workbench, post office cage, Western Union service, veterinary supplies, and of course the soda fountain. A small bedroom recreates the early ‘emergency room,' where a patient stayed with the pharmacist until the frontier doctor returned to town.

Left from the Pharmacy Room is the Product Room. Case exhibits in here include herbals for teas, nasal delivery systems (atomizers and nebulizers), injectable products, and a 100-year range of products related to women. The latter may be the largest display of this type in the country. One cabinet exhibits the miniature tools and supplies of the frontier doctor, who road circuit around the region.

The fourth and final exhibit room is Pioneer Hall, where retired or deceased pharmacists who practiced in the state of Texas are honored with plaques giving their name, where he or she practiced, and when. Registered pharmacist certificates and diplomas from Texas and surrounding states hang on another wall.

Throughout the museum, examples of pharmacy art are prominently displayed. There are posters, prints, paintings, photographs, many colorful show globe. These are glass vessels filled with different colored liquids and represented the pharmacy of the past the way the barber pole did for its profession.

Billy Walker, a retired drug company representative and avid collector of pharmacy antiques and memorabilia, dreamed of creating a museum to house his extensive collection of old time pharmacy bottles, tools, and furnishings. But he couldn't find anyone interested in turning his dream into reality until he met with Dr. Arthur A. Nelson, Jr., Dean of the Texas Tech School of Pharmacy. The two men met in August, 1997, and spent the day discussing museum philosophy and digging through Billy's collection of pharmacy antiques.

Thanks to the dream of one man and the support of others, the Texas Pharmacy Museum is now a reality. Billy spent an entire year installing his collection and other donations into 3,000 square feet of exhibit space located in the Texas Tech School of Pharmacy building on the Amarillo campus. Opened to the public in October, 1998, it is the first of its kind in the state of Texas. It is also an integral part of the School of Pharmacy curriculum, serving as a museum/laboratory for the students, faculty, and staff and providing artifacts and resource material for the annual History of Pharmacy course.

The collection includes over 12,000 items related to the history of the pharmacy profession. Major classification categories include: art, scale balances, books, containers, drugstore items, furniture, laboratory glassware, medical items, mortars/pestles, show globes, and other pharmacy tools of the trade. Artifacts and other items have been donated by more than 150 donors from Texas as well as other states.

The artifact and library reference collections are available for research. Arrangements must be made in advance due to our limited hours of operation. Cataloging is in progress, but our object records are not yet complete. The library reference collection has two components: pharmacy history and collection reference (e.g., bottles, drug store collectibles, etc.). Work space is available for research use.

Guided tours of the galleries are available during regular hours and by request. No admission fee is charged.

A series of exhibit cases in the public hallway outside the permanent galleries are changed periodically.

The museum sponsors an annual lecture on some aspect of the history of pharmacy during National Pharmacy Week (2nd week in October).

The museum particpates in the annual History Fair held at Fannin Middle School in Amarillo.