The Tillman County Historical Museum was founded to preserve artifacts and information about Tillman County, Oklahoma. Housed in the old Horse Creek School, it lies adjacent to the old Frisco line in downtown Frederick. The Historical Society published two books about the history of Tillman County's people (Book I) and about it's businesses, churches, and schools (Book II).
The county's residents have donated historical buildings and many artifacts which are on display.
Additionally, the museum boasts Frederick's old Frisco Depot and a large red barn, in which the downstairs is filled with antique farming implements and tools, both large and small, and numerous other items best suited to a barns atmosphere. Upstairs is recreated a woman's world of the period spanning 1900 and 1935.
Horse Creek School, built in 1902 in northeastern Tillman County, was a one-room schoolhouse until 1946. For a few years in the 60s, it became North Deep Red Baptist Church. In 1977, the dilapidated building was moved to Frederick and restored for the use as a museum by the Frederick Rotary Club and Tillman County Historical Society.
A school bell that is rung by pulling a rope, a slate blackboard, the original Horse Creek School dictionary and seal, small name-carved wooden disks, fragile old schoolbooks and attendance certificates, many school photographs - all evoke the period when Tillman County had over one hundred country schools.
The schoolhouse museum also exhibits many other items of varied historical interests - dolls, including a Kestner, a china head, and a Mary Todd Lincoln - baseballs signed by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the rest of the 1938 World Series champs .. and memorabilia from America's war years.
Areas of both building are reserved for rotating exhibits, by loaning articles of historical interest for display, area residents participate in the museum's on-going program of expanding an understanding of Tillman County's heritage.