Alfred Witte, a local businessman, funded the first building of the Witte Museum in 1926, and it has grown into San Antonio's premier natural history institution. Since its founding, the Witte has grown into the most comprehensive museum of Texas natural and human history in existence, and its location on the banks of the upper San Antonio River within Brackenridge Park gives it a setting that perfectly matches its mission. Inside, the Witte tells the story of deep Texas — the fossil record of the ancient inland sea that once covered this region, the dinosaurs and prehistoric mega-fauna that roamed the Hill Country, and the Paleo-Indian cultures that hunted them.
The museum holds remarkable artifacts from the Lower Pecos Canyon region, where ancient hunter-gatherer societies painted intricate rock art on limestone bluffs beginning as early as 4,000 years ago — some of the oldest and most spectacular rock art in North America. A major expansion completed in 2017 added new gallery wings and dramatically improved the museum's ability to display its vast collections. The H-E-B Body Adventure gallery explores human biology with hands-on exhibits aimed at schoolchildren who have become the museum's most devoted regulars.
Behind the museum, historic log cabins have been relocated from across South Texas to create an open-air history village.