Tinkertown Museum

On a side road of the Turquoise Trail (a scenic byway from Albuquerque to Santa Fe), just inside Sandia Park, one finds Tinkertown. The museum/installation/funhouse is the creation of Ross Ward, who made hundreds of wood figures, painted, built and decorated the space, and collected incredible ephemera from a now long-gone America.

The 22 rooms of the museum include many dioramas (the Wild West Town is over 60-feet long) with moving parts, carnival automatons, an actual boat... Ward began carving the figures in 1962 and opened the first room in 1983. Like many things in New Mexico, it is weird, immersive, and just a little bit magical.