NEH Preservation Grant Improves Museum Storage     

            Last April the museum applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund an on-site consultation and equipment purchases to improve the conditions in the museum storage areas. This summer we were delighted to hear that we had received an award of $5,000 for this project.

            On September 19 and 20 we had a visit from a conservator, Terri Schindel, from Boulder, Colorado. Conservation professionals receive special training in the care and preservation of historical artifacts. The services of these specialists are expensive and hard to come by in the state of Wyoming and so this was a great opportunity for us.

            Schindel performed an overview of our entire collection, both on exhibit and in storage. Her comments on the collection stored in the museum building were generally favorable. Unfortunately,  in our off-site facility conditions were,  just as staff suspected, far below acceptable standards. The storage facility is not heated and constant exposure to freeze/thaw cycles is very damaging for many articles in our collection. Schindel’s first suggestion was to move the collection immediately to a climate controlled facility. Museum staff had begun to examine some potential plans for relocating storage to a more climate-controlled environment, but given budget constraints in the county, it was determined that relocation was not feasible at the time.

            Consequently Schindel then suggested that stand-alone heaters be installed in the off-site storage. These were purchased with funds from the grant and will be in place in the next couple of months. These heaters should keep the storage areas just above freezing. Moderately low temperatures are actually best for the artifacts as long as the level does not drop below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the damage of the freeze /thaw cycle.

            Deficiencies in work space for the Curator were noted. Schindel suggested that the curatorial office should be expanded to include more artifact processing area and storage for items waiting to be accessioned.             

            She also recommended that the Museum Board look at creating an acquisition budget in order to add to the museum collection by purchase as well as by donation.

            The report suggested an update of the Long Range Conservation Plan and the creation of an Emergency Preparedness Plan for the new building.

            According to the report, overall the staff is taking good care of the collection. However, there exist many opportunities for improvement and the staff will be busy for the next several months making some of the changes.

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Holiday Events Planned
      

            Please join us on Friday, November 22 and Saturday the 23rd for a “Just Gettin’ In The Mood” pre-Christmas sale. All Museum Store items (except Green River centennial coins) will be 20% off. We will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. for your shopping pleasure. Free cookies and hot cider. Come and join the fun!

            Santa will be arriving at the museum on Saturday, December 7th at noon. The museum will open at 10 a.m. and we will have special holiday displays of toys from our collection as well as our Green River model train display. Santa’s arrival is sponsored by the Green River Chamber of Commerce with goodie bags for the kids provided by Chamber member businesses.

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What's In Store

Are you in charge of helping Santa with his shopping list? Let the Museum Store help. We have a great selection of new books and gifts for good boys and girls of all ages.

            In response to numerous requests we have added two Thomas Moran prints of the Palisades on both canvas and paper. We also have a selection of hand-crafted jewelry by local artisan Kim Bon-Hunter. Kim produced some designs exclusively for us based on rock art displayed at the museum. Lander artisan Curt Adams has produced jewelry made from Wyoming jade, agate, turitella (fossilized snail shells) and fiber optic. The fiber optic is the same material that is used for communication cables, but for jewelry purposes comes in many colors and, once polished, takes on an almost opalescent look. He also makes a number of gift items from turitella and petrified wood including clocks and lazy Susans.  Curt’s wife Kathryn also produces beautiful Wyoming wildflower note cards for us.

            We have a large selection of Union Pacific merchandise including afghans, clocks, mugs, and engineer caps for both adult and children.

            For kids we carry an assortment of stuffed critters including dinosaurs of all sorts, bears, jackalopes, buffalo, prairie dogs, moose and antelope. We also have some wonderful rubber band guns and traditional toys such as a Chinese jump ropes and marbles.

            If you need books about the history of our area, the Museum Store is your source. Pushed Off The Mountain, Sold Down The River: Wyoming’s Search for Its Soul is a new book by Samuel Western. It examines Wyoming’s mythical way-of-life as home to cowboys, prospectors, cattle barons and other independent types and how this belief has damaged the state’s ability to compete in the world marketplace and keep its young people at home.

            Coyotes and Canaries: Characters Who Made The West Wild...And Wonderful is the latest offering by Wyoming writer Larry K. Brown. He tells the stories of little know Westerners  “...some good, many bad, most in-between, all fascinating—from prostitutes and outlaws to governors and professors.”

            Blood of the Prophets :Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows is a controversial new book by Will Bagley which examines an infamous event in Utah history and draws some new conclusions. The book won the Utah Arts Council Publication prize.

            Our western humor section features such jewels as Never Ask A Man The Size Of His Spread, Don’t Squat With Your Spurs On and the old favorite, The Roadkill Cookbook.

            In addition we also have a section of children’s activity and coloring books on pioneer and Native American life and crafts, as well as stickers, pencils, erasers and finger puppets featuring wildlife and dinosaurs.

            Especially for the holidays we have two CDs which feature old-fashioned holiday music played on traditional instruments by a group called the Trail Band. There are also some other CDs of the same group playing traditional western and folk music

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Board Message
Kevin Holdsworth

           At the heart of the controversy over the Martin’s Cove Land Exchange is precisely what the events of 1856 mean.  On one side the tragedy is seen as an object lesson in faith-enhancement.  Another view is precisely the opposite.  Opponents of the land exchange express the fear that whatever facilities might be built on the site would be used primarily for proselytizing, while those who favor the exchange see proselytizing as one of its purposes.

            My point here is not necessarily that one interpretation is better or more valid than the other, but how a sponsoring institution can leave room for many views and insure that the possibility of interpretation exists.  The burden of interpretation ought to lie with the visitor, not with the sponsoring institution. 

            Western American history is fraught with controversy.  How do we view fur trappers, for instance—as pillagers, as servants of capitalist enterprises in which they had no stake, as romantic adventurers?  In a county such as Sweetwater, which has a rich mining history, how do we tell the too-often-untold stories of immigrant miners and thereby surmount the Wyomingites-are-all-cowboys stereotype?  Given that John Wesley Powell is now rightly seen as a kind of cultural hero, how do we put his achievement into perspective considering the glow of adoration that surrounds him?

            These are fundamental problems of a public historical museum.  We don’t want our visitors to say, You’ve told me what it means before you told me what happened.  We want to present them with significant data—in the exhibits, in the museum store, and in the publicly-available archives—in order that visitors can decide for themselves what things mean. 

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Curator's Corner       
Mark Nelson

      This summer and fall witnessed the continued movement of items into the museum storage room. There are currently well over 2,500 objects now stored in the new museum. The alternate store room in the courthouse has been completely vacated, with those objects now stored at an offsite facility.

            We are continuing with the photographing of artifacts that are now housed in museum storage. That project will continue into the future on a sporadic basis. The total number of images that are currently available on individual computer records has grown greatly over the course of the last few months.

            With recently acquired grant funds we were able to finance a site survey for our new museum. Terri Schindel, a professional conservator from Colorado, recently spent a two-day period evaluating our operation. Most of our attention during her stay focused on storage needs and the improvement of environmental conditions at current storage facilities. As a result of her recommendations, we have proceeded with the addition of insulation and heating units at our primary offsite storage room.

            Backlog cataloging has been completed,  with the exception of a few newly acquired artifacts. To date, the museum has accepted 189 artifacts into the collection this year.

            I will be working with Gary in the weeks ahead in rearranging the museum gallery. This project will necessitate moving a number of objects from exhibition into storage and vice versa.

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Exhibits Roundup  
Gary Perkins

            Christmas is just around the corner. I am building three showcases to display some of the museum’s interesting collection of toys. The ladies’ fashion items will soon be on display at Superior’s Senior Citizen’s Center. In addition, Fern Gaensslen donated an old jewelry store showcase which we will use to display toys. We will also display the electric train set that so many children love. We will place our Santa Claus suit on the mannequin in the 360 degree showcase which currently displays typical clothes worn by a coal miner. It should be the largest display of children’s toys we have mounted in years. My goal is to get the Christmas display finished in time for the hundreds of children who will come to the museum to see the Chamber of Commerce sponsored visit by Santa Claus on December 7th.

            Because our gallery does not have enough room to do everything we want, I have decided to store the items currently on display in the kitchen, bedroom and clothes making/maintaining exhibits called “Threads,” and replace them with new exhibits after the Christmas display is taken down in January. Many elements of the kitchen and bedroom exhibits have been on display for over twenty years and I think it is time for a change. As we don’t have enough storage space available to house the large furniture items, we will have to store them in the gallery. Mark and I will push the furniture into a smaller area and then erect 4’ by 8’ panels in front of them to mount the new exhibits on. The new exhibits are designed to explain the social history of our county. These will include: a) the immigrants’ experience in Sweetwater County, b) fraternal and labor organizations, c) religion, d) education, e) medicine, f) businesses, g) newspapers, h) boom and bust cycles, i) trona industry, and j) the oil and gas industries. Eventually I plan to include exhibits on wild horses, famous people who have lived here or visited, and a display on haunted Sweetwater County. A dedicated area for temporary and traveling exhibits will also be included in the gallery.

            Once the plan is complete, I think the new exhibits will expand the story of our county’s history. When we get more exhibition space in the basement or in another building, we will bring back the furniture with the idea of recreating a 1900 house, saloon, blacksmith shop, office, and a general store.

            I have also been working on a script for a ten-minute DVD movie to complement the “Immigrant Experience” exhibit. We have had many positive comments on the other two movies currently showing in the gallery, Moving Waters: The Story of the Green River in Sweetwater County and The Instrument of Human Happiness: The Story of the Phonograph. Additionally, we are waiting on funding from a grant to develop another DVD movie on modern archaeology. I spent a day this summer with James Lowe, a historic archaeologist, cataloging the dump site at the abandoned Gunn coal mine as part of a Bureau of Land Management requirement before Scottish Power could erect a new power line over this site. This movie along with a showcase full of representative items from the Gunn site will be on display at the Sweetwater County Airport terminal.

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Director's Report
Ruth Lauritzen

I am happy to report that Sweetwater County has received some recognition for its work in saving historic structures, specifically for the rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of the old Green River post office into a new home for our museum. In September County Commission Chair John Pallesen accepted the Maurine Carley Historic Preservation Award  from the Wyoming State Historical Society (WSHS).

            Maurine Carley, who was a long-time active member of the Wyoming State Historical Society and acted as its treasurer for twenty years, was a recognized historian and writer. She was dedicated to the preservation of the history of Wyoming and shared this dedication in her writing and by serving as a trail guide for many State Historical Society treks.

            The recipient of this award is selected by the WSHS Historic Preservation Committee based on the project’s excellence in the field of historic preservation. The award comes with a plaque and a check for $500. The plaque has been proudly mounted in our lobby and the money will be used for building improvement projects.           

            There is nothing like a historic building. The quality of construction and sense of place cannot be found in most newly built facilities. The marble wainscoting, ceramic tile floors and granite front steps of our museum would be well beyond the budget for the average public building nowadays.

            The Sweetwater County Commissioners have an excellent track record in saving and reusing old government buildings. The county offices in Rock Springs are located in the old hospital building, parts of which were built in 1898. These older portions replaced and were built on the foundations of the original hospital which opened in October of 1894 and was destroyed by fire in January of 1897. 

            Next door stands another old structure used as a county office. The Nurses Home, was built in 1901 to provide dormitory housing for the graduate nurses who worked in the hospital. It was remodeled in 1990s and now serves as offices for the Sweetwater County Attorney.

            Another county-owned historic building houses the Circuit Court of Sweetwater County. Built in 1906 as Green River’s Carnegie Library, the building stands between the Sweetwater County Courthouse and Green River City Hall. Then of course there is our museum building, a 1931 post office.

            It is neither cheap nor easy to renovate an old building for modern use. Usually extensive remodeling is required to bring the building up to  modern code and at times it seems easier to just tear it down and start again. So why do it?  There are actually two reasons. First, a historic rehabilitation can make financial sense. Even new construction can have flaws, as we have learned in the past several years with the discovery of major structural problems in nearly public new buildings. Repairs to these new buildings have cost tax payers a great deal. Old foundations and walls have stood the test of time. They have generally settled all they are going to, and as long as they are structurally sound when remodeling begins, chances are they will remain that way. In the long run an old building can be at least as good, if not better, than new construction.

            The second reason is simply that historic buildings are an attractive part of our past that contribute to the look of our towns and cities. They also provide a tie to our history and show that we value what came before.

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Volunteer Opportunities

     If you have an interest in volunteering at the museum please call Ruth at 872-6435 or 352-6715. Volunteers may choose to work as much as they wish, coming in on a regular schedule or just helping out for special events. If you have special talents and time to give we would love to hear from you.

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