Museums

Visitors to Philmont are encouraged to visit our museums, which tell the area's story through artifacts and art.

The Philmont Museum and Seton Memorial Library and the Kit Carson Museum may be visited any day during the summer, and weekdays the rest of the year. Tours of the Villa Philmonte must be arranged at the Philmont Museum. No fee is charged at any of these museums. During the summer, daily bus service is available to visit the Kit Carson Museum at Rayado. There is no fee for bus service, and it can be scheduled in Logistics soon after your group arrives at Philmont.

Villa Philmonte

Waite Phillips built the Villa Philmonte as the summer home for his family on the Philmont Ranch. It was completed in 1927 and was designed in Spanish Mediterranean style. Restored to the period when Phillips owned the ranch, it now serves as a memorial to him and his generosity to the Boy Scouts of America. Guided tours are offered during the spring, summer, and fall.

Seton Memorial Library and Philmont Museum

Ernest Thompson Seton

Located at headquarters, the Philmont Museum houses exhibits related to the history, art, and natural history of the Philmont area. The Seton Memorial Library is home to the personal art, library, and natural history collections of the founder and first Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of America, Ernest Thompson Seton.

The museum shop carries Southwestern Indian jewelry, Pendleton blankets, Navajo rugs, kachina dolls, pottery, and books about the Southwest.

Winter hours are 8 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Summer hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission is free.

Inquiries about donations, archives, collections and tours may be addressed to:

Director of Museums, Philmont Scout Ranch
17 Deer Run Road
Cimarron, NM 87714
505-376-2281
E-mail jschuber@netbsa.org

Kit Carson Museum at Rayado

Philmont lies on part of a land grant given to Carlos Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda by the Mexican government in 1841. Mountain man Lucien Maxwell founded a colony on the grant on the Rayado River in 1848. A year later, he was joined at the settlement by frontiersman Kit Carson. Their ranch on the Rayado was visited by many traders traveling on the Santa Fe Trail.

In 1950, the Boy Scouts of America built an adobe museum at Rayado to serve as an interpretive area to portray its history and recount the exploits of Maxwell and Carson. It was named in honor of Kit Carson.

Staff at the Kit Carson Museum dress in period clothing and demonstrate frontier skills and crafts like blacksmithing, cooking, shooting, and farming. Each room in the museum is outfitted with reproduction furniture and objects typical of New Mexico in the 1850s. The Rayado Trading Company, located at the museum, sells books, maps, reproduction tools and equipment, moccasins, and blankets.

The Kit Carson Museum is seven miles south of Philmont's headquarters on New Mexico Highway 21. Summer hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission is free. The museum is open only for special events during the rest of the year.