In 1927, a local named Ginevra Wood Carson acquired a room in the Tom Green County Courthouse for an exhibit on local history, and there established what would become the Fort Concho Museum. When the museum began expanding into other rooms of the courthouse, Carson moved the museum into Fort Concho's headquarters building on August 8, 1930. Carson struggled to raise a sum of $6,000 () to purchase the building from its owner, who in 1935 relented and accepted the $3,000 () she had been able to raise. That same year, the city of San Angelo assumed partial administrative responsibility for the museum, to be managed by a board of directors headed by Carson until she retired in 1953. The Great Depression and World War II imposed financial difficulties on the museum, though four buildings were acquired in 1939. There were further acquisitions in the later 1940s, until the 1950s Texas drought again strained municipal resources. The museum was made a department of the city of San Angelo in 1955, but there was only property purchased in that decade; the Fort Concho Museum by this time controlled only about a quarter of the fort grounds. In the 1960s, the city of San Angelo sought to cede the Fort Concho Museum to the federal and state governments, but both were prioritizing other Texas forts.