One of the many permanent exhibits at Old Cowtown Museum is our First Arkansas Valley Bank building. Built for the Kansas centennial celebration of 1961, this exhibit shows how a cattle town bank may have looked and operated.

There are currently many collection pieces in the banking exhibit. These include desks, ledgers, a bookcase, and an original William Mathewson safe. One area that has always needed expanding for the bank is our money collection.

With the support of the Cowtown Collections Committee, I recently purchased some original coins from the 1870s. Greatly expanding the current collection, I have added twenty coins. These coins include silver dollars, half dollars, quarter dollars, dimes, half-dimes, and three-cent nickels.

​ Dollar coin

​ 3 cent nickel

These new coins can be used in multiple areas. The plan is to display some of these in the bank. They can also be used in temporary exhibits and highlighted during special event expos. Wherever they end up, Cowtown can now tell a better story of money used in transactions during the early history of Kansas.

Half dollar​

​ Half dime