New Faces-New Places 

     The museum is in a period of great change. Not only are we on the verge of moving into a newly renovated facility, but in the last two months the museum has replaced two of its four employees. After twenty-seven years with the museum secretary/clerk Lois Brandner retired at the end of 2000. Curator Amy Rood left in November to take another job at the Salisbury House, a palatial historic home in Des Moines, Iowa. This move will not only provide new career opportunities for her and her husband Robb, but puts her much closer to her family.  

      Kari Jensen began training for the job of Bookkeeper/Secretary in November. She was formerly Assistant to the Director at the Community Fine Arts Center. Kari lives in Green River with her husband Curt. She has five children: Kiersten who attends University of Wyoming at Casper College; Keith who attends Utah State University in Logan, Utah; Kara who is a student Casper College; Kreg, a freshman at Green River High School and KateLyn who is in the seventh grade at Lincoln Middle School.  

     Kari was born in Wyoming, but grew up in Hawaii.  She enjoys mountain bike riding, kick boxing, collecting antique plates, and printmaking.  She is just a few semesters short of a B.A. in Arts Administration.

      Mark Nelson will be returning to the museum in June 2001 as Curator. He formerly held the same position for eight years before leaving to work at the Museum of Nebraska History in Lincoln. However, the call of southwestern Wyoming has lured him home again.  Mark was born and raised in the Bridger Valley and has also held museum positions at Fort Bridger and the Little Bighorn National Battlefield.  

     His interests lie in the fields of Native American and frontier military history. In 1993 he coordinated the rededication of the graves of two Indian Wars era Medal of Honor recipients buried in the Rock Springs Cemetery and produced a related exhibit.  He and his wife Tara will be returning to Green River with their sons Carson and Zach.

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Every Building Has A Story

     Many different types of buildings carry the honor of being on the National Register of Historic Places. Five of the twenty-eight sites in Sweetwater County are transportation-related, and of those, four are buildings associated with passenger stage lines. 

      One of these, the Granger Stage Station, is the subject of this issue’s Every Building Has A Story profile.

     The Granger Station is a Wyoming State Historic Site located in Granger, Wyoming. The site contains one building constructed of cut native stone joined with lime-sand mortar.

      The building was probably constructed around 1861-62. There has been some controversy and confusion over the date of the construction of this building. There was a stage station called the Ham’s Fork station located nearby. This station was a very crude dugout building set against a rise. It was described in less than glowing terms by an early traveler, Sir Richard Burton. “It was a disgrace; the squalor and filth were worse almost than the two—Cold Springs and Rock Creek—which had called our horrors, and which had always seemed to be the ne plus ultra of Western discomfort. The shanty was made of dry stone piled up against a dwarf cliff to save backwall, and ignored doors and windows.”

      This disreputable building served as the station for the transcontinental stage line which ran on the Oregon Trail during the 1850s. The station also saw visitation from the  emigrant traffic on the route and, for a brief time, the fabled Pony Express.

     By 1861 the Pony Express had failed and there were increasing problems with Indian depredations along the route. At about this time the stage line was bought out by Ben Holladay and renamed the Central Overland Express.

      Because of the problems with the Indian tribes of the northern plains, Holladay decided to move his stage route further south. The new route passed over the continental divide at Bridger’s Pass and followed the Bitter Creek through southern Wyoming. The new route rejoined the old Oregon Trail line at Granger.

      Holladay invested considerable capital in improving his horseflesh, rolling stock and the stations along his new route. It was at this time that the shabby Ham’s Fork station was replaced by what is known as the Granger station. What is thought to be the remains of the old station have been found about four miles from Granger.

      The Granger Station had no great military significance and was never permanently garrisoned with troops. Soldiers were stationed near there during the late 1850s during the “Mormon War” and in December of 1862 because of the disappearance of over 100 head of horses between Granger and the Ft. Bridger Station.

      Crossing the unsettled West by coach was an arduous process. An 1877 column in the Omaha Herald warned, “Don’t imagine for a moment you are going on a pic-nic; expect annoyance, discomfort and some hardships. If you are disappointed, thank heavens.” 

      Coaches ran twenty-four hours a day, stopping about every twelve miles to change horses at a swing station. The Granger station was probably a swing station, but may have had greater importance than most due to the fact that it stood at the junction of two major westward trails, the Oregon/California Trail and the Overland Trail.

      Probably the most famous person to spend any time at the station was William Henry Jackson. This pioneer photographer spent three weeks there in 1866 waiting to join a wagon train headed for Salt Lake. He spent his wait time hauling hay for the station. Jackson later rose to prominence by being the primary photographer of the building of the Union Pacific Railroad and becoming the first photographer to become part of a government geological survey team. He was part of the F. V. Hayden’s 1870 western survey.

      After the arrival of the railroad in 1868 and the following demise of the transcontinental stagecoach business the building became a residence. It eventually was donated to the State of Wyoming in 1930 and was named a State Historic Site. William H. Jackson donated a bronze dedicatory plaque in commemoration of his experiences there.

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Director's Report
Ruth Lauritzen

     Just before the holidays I was showing a former board member through the new museum building. Mark Kurtz was on the board when I came to work for the museum in 1985 and served on the board for a longer-than-average term of eight years.

      After his standard six-year term he continued to serve two more years under special permission from the Sweetwater County Commissioners. At that time, due to a death, a resignation and a board member who chose to serve only one term, the museum board had little continuity in its leadership. Mark was kind enough to fill this void. He was also very active on the board of the Sweetwater County Museum Foundation Board. During these eight years Mark was privy to a lot of the early efforts to move the museum to another facility.

      While walking through the building we both commented that it looked like the project was really going to be finished this time.

      Indeed, finding a new home for the museum outside of the county courthouse has been a dearly held dream for thirteen years.

      The great “move the museum” project was originally discussed in February of 1988 at one of the first meetings of the Museum Foundation board. Since that time plans for buildings of all sizes and shapes have been drawn on both napkins and computer-aided drafting programs. These plans have ranged from a structure the size of the White Mountain Mall with a planetarium and magnet school, to a $3 million dollar building with expansive gallery space and an auditorium for public programs, and finally come to an adaptive reuse of a historic building which will be completed in phases.

      Studies have been completed by both by staff and outside experts. An ever-changing group of museum board members, staff and citizens have participated in needs assessments, County Commissioner meetings, grant proposal writing, public hearings, conferences with architects and engineers and city council meetings. Funding mechanisms as diverse as t-shirt sales and capital facility tax elections have been explored. School groups, individual donors and not-for-profit support groups have supplemented the appropriations made by County Commissioners to complete the renovation.

      The new Sweetwater County Historical Museum is not like any of those earlier visions of grandeur, but in many ways is more suitable. The building is in a prime location in the heart of downtown Green River. It is a historic building with a real “museum” feel to it. There is also room for expansion when funds become available. And that is the plan for the future of the museum, continued growth and development. 

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Exhibits Roundup
Gary Perkins

Playthings from the Past   

     For the Christmas exhibit this year we decided to do several things differently.  Criss Staffa, our exhibits volunteer, helped me move most of the ranching and farming equipment that normally resides in the front window to storage to make space for the Christmas tree, the antique doll house and the train set.  Cory Dillon, one of the original builders of the train set, spent many of his lunch hours trying to get it into top mechanical shape.  Cory arrived at our Open House on December 2nd, dressed in his engineer outfit to demonstrate the trains for the kids ­ they loved it!  Nearly 550 people came to the Sweetwater County Courthouse to meet Santa and to see the museum Christmas exhibits during the Open House.  Mark Kot, county planner, volunteered to spend his Thanksgiving holiday building a walking beam engine out of a Erector set that was loaned to the museum.  This year we let Mark use a Erector model 8 1/2 to play with.  Mark asked that we provide a bigger set next year with as he no longer feels challenged with the ones we have.  

     We also dressed a mannequin in Kenneth Christoffersen's Santa Claus suit and placed it in the kitchen display.  Christoffersen, of Rock Springs, has been serving as the jolly old elf of Sweetwater County since 1968.  He just recently retired the suit he used for many of those years and donated it to the museum.  The suit was originally purchased in 1962 by Christoffersen's father, Ed "Chris" Christoffersen who was Santa for the American Legion in Rock Springs.  Christoffersen adopted the suit and the job from his father and has been spreading the Christmas spirit ever since.

    We also filled a showcase with toys that are new to the museum collection.  During the past summer former Green River resident Grace Gasson donated a number of dolls and toys and they are featured in the display.   

The Grass Lodge People

     We finished a rehab of our Native American exhibit in January.  Criss and I made several large prints of Indians, re-wrote and expanded the text to include a more complete story of the Shoshoni people, added the story of Sacajawea, the guide for the Lewis & Clark Expedition and increased the information on Washakie, the great chief of the Shoshoni.  We also bought a new showcase to match the other two in the exhibit.  The new case contains moccasins and other handmade objects.  In the other cases a petroglyph, arrows, war clubs, flutes, pipes and ornate pipe bags and a Ute saddle are displayed.  During our search for photographs for the Shoshoni exhibit, we found a dramatic negative in our collection annotated "Indians dancing in Rock Springs in either 1886 or 1887."  The negative was scanned and the image enlarged by tiling sheets of paper together to form a picture over six feet long.  

     Despite repeated provocations, the Shoshoni were steadfast allies of the Americans coming West.  Sacajawea, was instrumental in the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition which was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the new western territory acquired in 1803, began the close association with the invading Americans.  The Shoshoni chief Washakie continued the alliance.  Although Washakie was a great war chief who mercilessly fought the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Crow tribes, he decided that the Shoshoni's only hope of survival was to become allies with the invading whites.  He and his warriors served as scouts and took an active part in the battles alongside US Army troops during the western "Indian Wars."  Without the help and cooperation of the Shoshoni, the settling of Wyoming by the pioneers  would have undoubtedly been much bloodier than it was.  

Lincoln Highway Exhibit

     As part of our efforts to tell the story of how transportation routes played such a significant role in our county's history, we began putting together a small exhibit on the Lincoln Highway.  As author Gregory M. Franzwa noted, the Lincoln Highway "is not as famous as Route 66, but it should be."  In 1912 traveling by automobile was a risky adventure.  Most roads were dirt or sand and they were impossible to travel in wet weather, very few of them had signposts and most led nowhere.  If one wanted to travel long distances, one took the train.  Carl Fisher, the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, decided that America needed a good gravel road from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.  He called his vision the "Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway."  A year later it became known as the Lincoln Highway ­ the nation's first transcontinental highway.

     Originally the highway was planned to be the easiest and quickest route between the coasts, even if it meant by-passing large cities.  The route was designated with red, white and blue signs with a large "L" in the center or with the same colors painted on telephone poles.  In Wyoming the route basically followed the Union Pacific Railway and the old Overland Trail through Green River and Rock Springs.  Along the new highway motels, gas stations, diners and drug stores quickly sprang up to meet the needs of travelers.  
   
     Americans have always been obsessed with the westward road.  Like the Oregon and California Trails a half century before, the Lincoln Highway captured America's imagination ­ it led from the crowded cities of the East through the romantic West and ended in the golden land of California.  The face of America was transformed once again ­ the age of the automobile had arrived.  

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Board Message
Stan McKee

       I am happy to say that the supporters of the museum continue to extend a hand in our efforts to complete the renovation of the old Post Office. Recently the Sweetwater County Museum Foundation authorized expenditures of up to $12,000 to complete the painting and installation of the blinds on the main floor of the building. These items were not included in the scope of work established by the county and we are grateful to the Foundation for their assistance in this.

     The elevator shaft has been constructed onto the side of the building and masons are currently applying the facing brick. The elevator is due to arrive some time in February or March. Painting and tiling are scheduled to begin soon, followed by the application or refinishing of flooring and the installation of restroom fixtures.

      There is still no firm date for moving the museum into the building, but we are confident it will be sometime this summer. Watch for our grand opening!  

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We now have a Museum Photo page.