Little Fort Worth military museum is now as big as an army. Here is where it’s located
The Military Museum of Fort Worth didn’t open at its new location on Veterans Day like officials wanted to after closing on Aug. 31, 2020, in the Stockyards.
Museum officials were delayed several months as they raised money for a second bathroom at their new location in Ridgmar Mall.
But the museum is open now at the mall, just in time for the Memorial Day weekend and other military holidays.
“We have many types of interactive exhibits,” said Tyler Alberts, executive director of the museum, in a recent email to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “We have expanded scenic elements that put you in the wars.”
The new museum is in Ridgmar Mall, 1726 Green Oaks Road, on the west side on the lower level between JC Penney and Dillard’s.
Admission is free for anyone who previously served in the military or is on active duty, and for children 10 and younger. Children 11 to 17 and seniors 65 and older pay $5. All non-service-connected adults 18 to 64 pay $10.
It’s open Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays noon to 5 p.m., and officials say there are plans to expand the days and hours of the museum once they get more volunteers.
The museum will be open Memorial Day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The museum’s new 11,000-square-foot home is a whole new world for what had been a tiny museum on Dorothy Lane near Camp Bowie Boulevard.
The museum then moved to the Stockyards. The Stockyards location where the museum moved in 2017 had 4,200 square feet of room for exhibits and tourists.
At the Stockyards, the little museum was able to show off such exhibits as a World War I trench and a room from a World War II farmhouse where soldiers established a command center.
The Stockyards location gave the Military Museum of Fort Worth a boost for several years.
And Ridgmar Mall officials were excited to have the museum.
“Ridgmar is always looking for new and unique uses to round out the tenant mix,” mall general manager Colby Welanetz said in a September 2020 email to the Star-Telegram “A great example of this would be SeaQuest and the Military Museum fits in nicely with that plan.”
The museum with its more than 15,000 displays and artifacts is located in the northwest section of the mall.
It includes items from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Gulf Wars.
Alberts said on Monday that museum officials still plan to have artifacts in a “mobile museum” format, meaning members will set up displays at places such as libraries, retirement centers and convention centers.
“One of the things that is really different than a lot of museums is that everything here is tied to someone,” Alberts said in a September 2020 interview. “We’ve just got a lot of really rare and interesting stories that are tied to people, and not just history.”
Donations can be made to the museum online at militarymuseumfortworth.org
