W.S. Strain Hall of Paleontology

Dr William S. Strain was director of the El Paso Centennial museum from 1937 to 1946. He served as professor of geology at The University of Texas at El Paso until retirement in 1974, when he became professor Emeritus of Geology.

He collected and described a significant number of Pleistocene vertebrate fossils found in local bolsons. He charted the course of the ancestral Rio Grande and named Lake Cabeza De Vaca, a major Pleistocene lake that covered much of west Texas, northern Chihuahua, and southern New Mexico.

In the museum on the second floor, one can find a collection of fossils that brings to life the prehistoric animals which once roamed this region.