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Collections from saddles and barbed wire to contemporary art are presented in this outstanding museum. The grand entrance opens onto The End of the Trail (1915, James Earle Fraser), a famous 18ft plaster sculpture of a lone Indian rider on a weary horse. Temporary galleries, a theater and a restaurant are to the left; to the right extends a long hallway leading past Prosperity Junction-a painstaking recreation of a late-19C cattle town-to the main exhibition galleries. Art of the American West features scores of noted works, many by Charles Russell, Frederic Remington and leading contemporary artists. (Each summer, the museum hosts the Prix de West, a prestigious exhibition and sale of modern Western art.) The Weitzenhoffer Fine Arms Gallery surveys late-19C domestic firearms; the Native American Gallery interprets cultural traditions; the American Cowboy Gallery focuses on the evolution and culture of the working cowboy. The Joe Grandee Museum of the Frontier West limns the legacy of the West in features on horses, traders, soldiers, conservationists and others. The American Rodeo Gallery, designed like an arena, pays tribute to this colorful sport. The Western Performers Gallery, to open in late 2002, will show how the West has been perceived in popular literature and film. Seventeen state flags fly over Western States Plaza, which flanks botanical gardens. In the Children's Cowboy Corral, youngsters don costumes and learn about ranch life.