Petit Jean Auto Museum

 In 1953 Winthrop Rockefeller moved to Arkansas and founded Winrock Farms and Winrock Enterprises atop the Petit Jean Ridge.  In 1966 Rockefeller was elected governor of Arkansas.

In addition to other interests, Rockefeller was a classic car collector.  He built on the mountain here  his personal collection of vintage cars museum.  Though his original collection was sold to Harrah’s after his early death, the building was given to the state.  It was then reopened as a classic car museum filled with about fifty beautiful cars either donated or on loan, including several of the vehicles in the original Rockefeller collection.

A 1906 Sears mail order car.

Since today was a rainy day, Trish and I decided to spend the morning at the museum.

The 1914 food truck that saw service for 32 years.

The vehicles range from about 1900 to the early sixties and are all in perfect condition.  We were the only visitors there this morning and enjoyed a slow time all to ourselves.

As a teenager, I would have loved this yellow Jeepster!

There were so many beautiful cars and other small artifacts.  One nice thing is that the museum is small…only about fifty cars, so we could take our time and still not get overloaded and feel like we needed to quit in the middle.

A beautiful 1934 Packard 120.

In the middle of our time, there was a very hard rainstorm, confirming our decision to spend the morning like this.  The sun came out just as we were finished and now we are sitting in the swing back on our cabin porch.