Museum Endowment Fund Provides For Future

In an resource development economy such as Sweetwater County, cycles of boom and bust are inevitable. Unfortunately, the effect that these periods of poverty and plenty have on county-funded agencies is also assured.

While the museum continues to rely almost entirely on county funding and appreciates the continued support of the County Commissioners, it was decided several years ago that creating a source of funding outside of public monies would be the prudent and responsible thing to do. From these beginnings sprang the Sweetwater County Historical Museum Endowment Fund.

An endowment fund is a sum of money which is placed in an account and invested at the best rate of return possible. The invested sum is never touched, only the interest is ever removed. The original principal, along with any additions made to it over time, continues to act as a financial workhorse. An endowment is a long term commitment to on-going funding. The returns are not large at the beginning, but as the principal grows, so does the interest revenue from the fund.

The museum set up their endowment fund with the Wyoming Community Foundation. This is an organization which was created as a Lasting Legacy project for the Wyoming State Centennial in 1990. It holds and invests endowment funds from all over the state.

In getting the endowment started, the museum took advantage of a grant offered by under another centennial program, the Wyoming Arts Endowment Fund . This program allowed qualifying organizations to apply for grant funds to be used toward creating an endowment fund. The grant required a one to one match to be raised by the entity receiving the grant. Between the original grant application in 1993 and the completion of the raising of the match in 1998 the museum received $15,380 from the program.

 The funds which provided the grant match were raised and donated by the Sweetwater County Museum Foundation and the Sweetwater County Historical Society. The Foundation engaged in several projects for raising funds including the publication of a book, Historical Images of Sweetwater County, the production of two t-shirts and various other raffles and fund raising projects. The Historical Society donated funds that had been set aside over a number of years to support worthy historical causes.

The grand total contained in the museum endowment fund as of the last reporting period was $60,246 and the fund currently provides roughly $2,500 in revenues to the county museum budget. This amount varies as the return depends on the performance of the investments. 

Currently all fund raising efforts are concentrated on the completion of the renovation of the Old Post Office, but the growth of the endowment fund has not been forgotten. Plans include future additions to the fund in order that it may continue to grow and to work for the good of the museum.

New Museum Web Address

In world increasingly dominated by the mysterious creature known as “dot com”, an organization without a simple and memorable web site name is doomed forever to obscurity. The original name of the museum page (http://members.sweetwater.net/~swchm/) was certainly not simple nor memorable. For that reason the museum decided to purchase its own domain name. It is www.sweetwatermuseum.org. This should make it much easier for internet users to get to the museum page initially, and to remember to come back occasionally and see what is new.

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Photo Lecture Presented As Part Of Museum Conference

The identification and care of photographs and magnetic media (audio and video tapes) created from the 19th century to the present will be the topic of a free public lecture to be held on May 3, 2000 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. in the Grace Gasson Room at the White Mountain Library in Rock Springs. This program, presented by Eric Paddock, Curator at the Colorado Historical Society and Paul Messier, Conservator of Photographs and Works on Paper, is an overview of a pre-conference workshop to be held the next day as part of the Colorado-Wyoming Association of Museums Annual Meeting. There is a $25 charge and required pre-registration for participation in the workshop entitled, “Preservation For A New Century-Photography”.  Contact the museum staff if you are interested in registering for any courses associated with the conference.

The Colorado-Wyoming Association of Museums Annual Meeting is a gathering of museum professionals from a two-state region. The meeting site changes yearly and bounces back and forth between the two states.

The Sweetwater County Historical Museum, along with the Rock Springs Historical Museum, Community Fine Arts Center, Western Wyoming Community College Art Gallery and Natural History Museum and the Children's’ Discovery Center are the local hosts of this event. The various committees have put together an entertaining and informative program which includes sessions on many aspects of museum work including a two-part program on the basics of creating exhibits presented by Exhibits Coordinator Gary Perkins, Kari Jensen of the Community Fine Arts Center, and Criss Staffa. Other local participants include museum curator Amy Stroh in a program on collections management software for small museums, Ruth Lauritzen in a session on state and local historic preservation organizations, Audra Oliver of the Rock Springs Historical Museum discussing a needs assessment survey conducted by CWAM, Mike Brown from the Sweetwater County Joint Travel and Tourism Board and Dave Hanks of the Rock Springs Chamber in a presentation of tourism organizations and former resident Barbara Allen Bogart, now of Evanston,  in a session on oral histories. 

There will be some opportunities for fun as well. The opening reception is being held at the historic Elks Lodge in Rock Springs and will feature accordion music provided by Rock Spring’s own Dave Petrie who is generously donating his time. An event held in Green River will highlight the agricultural aspect of Sweetwater County. A sheep camp will be on display and we hope to have Basque music for our guests.

The post-conference tour will give participants an opportunity to see for themselves the workings of an underground trona mine.

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Exhibits Roundup    
Gary Perkins

Since our last newsletter, my trusty volunteer Criss Staffa and I have installed new exhibits or text and graphics on explorers, stagecoaches, the Pony Express, the California and Cherokee Trails, coal and trona mining, clothing, home entertainment and the Mormon War of 1857.

We took down the vice exhibit, repainted the room and filled it with the home entertainment exhibit some of which had been in the front window area. We added the player piano to the exhibit next to the pump organ, Edison phonographs, early radios and a 1950s television. In the future, we plan to add sound to the display so that visitors can actually listen to the examples for the sounds from each of the instruments or devices.

To replace it, we filled the museum’s front window with ranching and agricultural items from the collection. The text for this exhibit is still in preparation, but it will include a section on the conflict between the cattlemen and the sheepherders and the experiences of homesteaders, especially the little-known role of single women homesteaders, in southwest Wyoming.

Another new exhibit, titled “Threads: From Lamb’s Back to Laundry Tub,” displays items used to make and take care of clothing. Spinning wheels and a loom, an early washing machine, a collection of irons and a sewing machine are featured in the display. On the walls of the room, advertisements from the period have been reproduced and hung as well as two colorful quilts which are on loan to the collection.

In addition to a new text board for the mining exhibit, we filled a showcase with items brought by immigrants to Sweetwater County from their home countries. These illustrate the diverse nature of our mining communities. Additionally, we had the glass company repair two antique table-top showcases for us. We will fill one of these with small Chinese items from the museum’s collection.

We are in the process of redoing our Great Automobile Race of 1908 exhibit for the entrance way as part of the transportation area. It will be placed next to the aviation and the Lincoln Highway exhibits.

A professional painter, Barry Wistreich of Barry and Company Painting and Contracting, helped us by volunteering to paint the fronts of the room vignette exhibits. This greatly improved their appearance and made the area look much more professional. To add more color to the museum, Criss and I repainted the large Thomas the Tank Engine panel and placed it next to the front entrance. Coupled with the new ranching exhibit, it adds eye-catching color and interest to the museum’s exterior and, hopefully, will entice passersby to come in.

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Volunteer Corner

Board Message
Stan McKee 

The major accomplishment for the Sweetwater County Historical Museum Board of Directors for this year is to complete the necessary modifications to the Post Office building in Green River so that it may house the County Museum exhibits. The renovations, planning as well as actual construction, have been ongoing for several years and we are beginning to see the “light at the end of the tunnel.” This year, the museum has been allocated $200,000 by the Board of County Commissioners for the needed renovations and we are looking forward to the remaining funds being made available next year to finish the work. The County Commissioners have a strong commitment to finishing this building and getting the museum moved.

Currently, work is continuing on the interior demolition, which involves the removal of the two vaults in the building. The electricians are completing the wiring for fire alarms, track lighting and elevator. Plumbing contractors will shortly begin working on the installation of the restrooms to be located in the basement and installation of a sink in the exhibit preparation area.

On behalf of the Museum Board of Directors, I would like to thank not only the County Commissioners for their support in this project, but friends with our two support groups, the Sweetwater County Museum Foundation and the Sweetwater County Historical Society. These groups have raised a considerable amount of money for this project as well as donating materials for our exhibits. Memorial bricks are still available. Come and see your County Historical Museum. You will be pleasantly surprised.

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Wanted: A Museum Wish List 

During a recent inventory of the museum book collection it was discovered that there were some major gaps in the collection of school annuals. These publications are an important source of information and photographs and the staff would like to try to fill some of the holes in the collection. If you have any of the following volumes and would consider donating them to the museum please call Ruth or Amy at (307) 872-6435 or 352-6715.

Rock Springs High School Sagebrusher—1913-20, ‘24, ’25, ‘27, ‘30, ‘37, ‘38, ‘45, ‘50, ’51, ’54, ’69, ’70, ‘73-’75, ‘77-present.

Green River High School Rendezvous—1917-23, ‘25-’30, ‘32-’41, ‘74, ‘76, ‘79, ‘83-present.

We are also looking for annuals from Reliance High School, Superior High School, Eden-Farson High School or Western Wyoming Community College. If you have any of these please give us a call and we can tell you if we need them to complete our collection.

The museum also maintains a collection of “family files” which contain biographical and genealogical information. If you have copies of family histories or other such material please call us and see if there is a place for it in our collection.  

WANTED FOR EXHIBIT

Beaver Top Hat for use in the mountain man exhibit. Displaying a hat like this helps museum visitors understand why so many trappers flocked to the area to trap beaver.

1. Antique car (Model A or Model T) steering wheel for Lincoln Highway exhibit.

2. Vintage gas pump (1920s-’40s)

3. Glass globe from old gasoline pump for Lincoln Highway exhibit.

4. Union Pacific Coal Company Posters and Flyers. We understand that the UPCC distributed posters or flyers in foreign countries and at immigration processing centers, such as Ellis Island, to entice people to come to Rock Springs to work in the coal mines. Does anyone have any of these? We would be interested in the donation of actual items or would even be grateful for the opportunity to make a copy.

If you have any of these items available for donation please contact a member of the museum staff at (307) 872-6435 or (307) 352-6715. We are always interested in hearing from the public regarding potential additions to the museum collection. Please call.

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