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Natural hisssssstory: One-of-a-kind rattlesnake museum a stone’s throw from Route 66

The Rattlesnake Museum in Old Town houses the world’s largest collection of live rattlesnakes

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Rattlesnake Museum & Gift Shop

LOCATION: 202 San Felipe St, NW, 505-242-6569, 

Tucked into a courtyard in Albuquerque’s Old Town is something that is truly one of a kind — a feat rarely achieved in 2026 — the largest collection of live rattlesnakes in the world.

The Rattlesnake Museum is home to 31 rattlesnake species and 20 other reptile species, along with hundreds of reptile-related artwork, artifacts and knick-knacks. The museum, started in 1990, gets around 60,000 visitors a year and is open Tuesday through Saturday year-round.

Owner Bob Myers said many visitors are actually afraid of snakes and come to face their fears. He said, in those instances, he will stay close to answer questions and make them comfortable.

“In so many cases, when somebody’s afraid of an animal, they just don’t know anything about it … just know what they’ve seen in movies or the stories they’ve heard from family members, but it’s not always fact,” he said. 

For instance, he said, even before the rattle, the snakes’ first line of defense is lying still and hoping to go unnoticed. He said rattlesnakes in particular fascinate people enough “to come through that door.”

“They’ve got to see them. I used to compare that to me getting on a roller coaster, scares the heck out of me, I got to do it anyway,” Myers said, adding that it’s like a stamp collection that is more rewarding to share with others.

Myers said since starting his “rattlesnake career” in college, he has caught or relocated “in the neighborhood” of 20,000 snakes. And he has only been bit once, in 1995, while out with National Geographic in the East Mountains.

“I was paying a little too much attention to the cameras — didn’t give the snake my full attention — and paid the price,” he said. On a pain scale, Myers said if smashing his finger with a hammer as a teenager was a 10, the bite was a “six or seven.”

But he had prepared for the moment a long time.

“By the time it happened, it was almost routine … and I was the one in the group that was calm and trying to calm others,” Myers said. “In a weird way, I enjoyed it and learned by it, and I can speak of it through experience.”



Myers, a former high school biology teacher, said he briefly considered working at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, but decided to open his own museum.  

“The scary part wasn’t the snakes, it was starting a business with no business experience, that’s still the scary part,” he said. The majority of snakes he has collected were acquired from zoos, private breeders or, sometimes, unfortunate situations like a drug dealer whose apartment was raided.

Aside from the snakes, scorpions and a tortoise, the museum also has the oldest Gila monster in captivity. While usually living 10 to 20 years, he said, Molly will turn 38 in September.

Myers said they got Molly from a previous owner that got bit and said the pain — which is infamous — “was worse than childbirth.”

“I have people coming in now in their mid 30s to early 40s that remember Molly when they were here on a field trip in first or second grade,” Myers said. 

With no retirement plans on the horizon, he said he wants to open a bigger space to “wow the socks off people” with the 20,000 artworks and artifacts he has in storage. 

Looking back, he said the museum has brought many fond memories, but one sticks out. As a boy interested in reptiles, his parents got him a book by herpetologist Roger Conant, which he used for years to reference and learn.

Soon after opening the museum, in walked Conant, by then in his 80s. He said Conant began hanging out at the museum, and they were friends until Conant died.

“Kind of surrealistic to have known him for so long through his book, and then meet him in person, and then attend his funeral,” Myers said. “It’s all a crazy story. He’s buried very close to my parents, so I still see him all the time.”