Centennial Museum

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The Centennial Museum and Chihuahuan Desert Gardens is a cultural history and natural history museum in El Paso, Texas, United States.

The Centennial Museum is located on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso. Its cultural focus is on the indigenous, colonial, pre-urban, and folk cultures of the border regions of southwestern United States and Mexico. The natural history focus is on the geology and biology of the Southwest and Mexico, with particular emphasis on the Chihuahuan Desert. The permanent exhibits include paleontology, geology, ethnology, archaeology, and regional higher vertebrates.

The Museum has an outstanding collection of Casas Grandes pottery, with many items displayed on its website as well as on exhibit.

The Chihuahuan Desert Gardens on the Museum grounds feature over 600 species of native plants. The gardens are intended to demonstrate that the use of native plants in landscaping can be fulfilling in terms of beauty and water conservation. Over 600 species of plants native to the Greater Chihuahuan Desert Region are cultivated in a series of "theme" gardens. The gardens also serve as a resource for informal and formal botanical and environmental education.

An extensive database of plant images and associated information is associated with the gardens.

The Laboratory for Environmental Biology is the biological research component of the Museum with particular emphasis on ecology and evolution, including systematics.

Temporary exhibits cover a wide range of subjects apropos to the Museum's mission or to that of the University of Texas at El Paso. Emphasis tends to be on the El Paso Border Region of the United States and Mexico.

The Museum website apparently is the most extensive educational resource on the internet for the layman concerning the vertebrates and plants of the Chihuahuan Desert region. Other web material includes transcripts of over 1300 short radio presentations concerning Southwestern subjects aired by the local National Public Radio station , KTEP. Courses on the website include An Introduction to the Chihuahuan Desert and Mammalogy on the Web.