J.W. Powell Statue Dedication Approaches   

          A well-known character from early Green River history, John Wesley Powell, will be honored with a statue in downtown Green River . Dedication will take place on Saturday, October 11, 2003. A program on Powell will be presented by river historian Roy Webb in the Green River Council Chambers at City Hall at  10:00 a.m.  Webb is Multimedia Archivist at Special Collections, Marriott Library at the University of Utah. He has an avid interest in the  Green River and its history and has authored several books. 

            Following Webb’s presentation the statue  will be dedicated at 12 noon in front of the  Sweetwater County Historical Museum, 3 East Flaming Gorge Way, Green River. Refreshments will be served at the museum following the dedication.

            The project, sponsored by the City of Green River with the assistance of the Sweetwater County Museum Foundation, had its beginnings over a year ago. Sculptor David A. Clark approached the City with the proposal to erect a statue to Powell.  Clark is a Green River native who received his early art training in Green River schools. He now lives in Lander and works full time as a sculptor. His parents, Gale and Martha Clark, still live in Green River.  

            Clark's design was a nine-foot-tall  representation of Powell holding an oar. The design was accepted by the City Council and a thirty-inch “maquette” or model was produced. The Council then commissioned the sculpture and the artist began work.  After much discussion, it was decided to place the statue in the downtown on Flaming Gorge Way for visibility and security reasons. 

            The Museum Foundation became involved when the Council requested aid in raising funds for building the base and placing the statue. The Foundation recognized that the placement of the statue near the museum would be of benefit to the museum and so  submitted numerous grant requests to industries and local groups for support of the project.  Donors to the project include: the Union Pacific Foundation, Sweetwater County Historical Society, Wells Fargo Community Assistance Fund,  Solvay Minerals and High Desert Art Galleries .  

            The Museum Foundation raised additional funds for the project by raffling a numbered, limited edition print of a painting  by Thomas Moran called Cliffs of the Upper Colorado River. The drawing for the print will be held at the dedication.  All dedication activities are open to the public and citizens are invited to join with the City of  Green River and  Sweetwater County in celebrating this new addition to historic downtown and the museum.

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Local Projects Win WSHS Awards

          Each year the Wyoming State Historical Society accepts nominations for its award program from its local chapters. The WSHS award program recognizes many different types of contributions to the preservation and presentation of  Wyoming history, including literature, art, activities and service. 

In June 2003 the Sweetwater County Historical Society submitted eight nominations for projects in  Sweetwater County.  Five of these projects garnered awards and all of these winning entries were either supported partially, or generated entirely by the museum. 

            The big winner was the Eden Valley History Project which won top honors in both the Activities category and Publications-Brochure category. The Eden Valley History project is an organized effort by a group of Eden Valley residents who have joined together to preserve the history of their area by collecting documents, photographs and oral histories. The group has also sponsored historical field trips around  Eden Valley . The museum supports the project by helping them raise funds and providing research assistance.

            Winning first place for Periodicals/Newspapers was the Historical Edition produced by the Green River Star. The 2003 annual issue had for a theme “The History of Transportation and Mining in  Sweetwater County”. The museum provided photographs and historical articles for the issue.   

            Green River:  Wyoming ’s Best Kept Secret won first place in the category of Audio-Video Documentary—Non-Professional. The production was a project of the Green River Historic Preservation  Commission. Commission member Bill Duncan wrote the script and the video was produced by Brian Madland, former video technology instructor at  Green River High School and his students. Many museum photographs were included in the production. 

            Finally, the new Sweetwater County Historical Museum brochure received honorable mention in the Publications—Brochures category. This brochure was designed and produced by Museum Volunteer Criss Perkins and Exhibits Coordinator Gary Perkins. Criss and Gary put in many hours in the production of this piece which is in full color, a first for the museum. Printing of the brochure was funded by the Joint Travel and Tourism Board. 

            Award certificates and ribbons were handed out by Governor Dave Freudenthal at the annual WSHS Awards Luncheon in Cheyenne on September 6th. Those who were unable to attend that presentation will receive their awards at the October meeting of the Sweetwater County Historical Society in Green River.

Improvements In Museum Streetscape

            This summer the “plain-Jane” concrete sidewalk frontage of the museum façade was transformed into a colorful and welcoming spot thanks to the work of the Sweetwater County Maintenance staff and the generosity of the Rock Springs Women’s Club and some of its individual members.  

            The Women’s Club donated a decorative four-foot concrete bench for placement in front of the museum. Individual members Virginia Tominc and husband Frank and Rose Wagner and husband Darrel donated a matching bench for the other side. These benches provide an attractive place for visitors and passersby to sit and rest.   The Women’s Club is to be commended for their show of community spirit by enhancing the appearance of public spaces.

            Also, thanks go to the County Maintenance staff for their hard work in planting and maintaining the flower beds in front of the museum and to the side along  Center Street . This is no small task given the requirements of daily watering and the lack of an irrigation system.  

            The positive comments from visitors on the appearance of the front of the museum as well as the cleanliness within are a credit to our fine Maintenance staff. 

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Board Message
Kevin Holdsworth

A bronze one-armed major has found a proper home—just in front of the Sweetwater County Historical Museum . This exciting and welcome development is the result of much time and trouble, and it represents a lasting act of vision for the City of Green River and Sweetwater County.   

            Mayor Norm Stark and the previous City Council commissioned the larger-than-life-sized bronze of John Wesley Powell to commemorate the point of departure for the 1869 and 1871 river voyages. Many articles, books and videos have been made about Powell and his crew’s achievement, but only one place can truly and rightly claim to be the point of departure,  Green River City, Wyoming.  Downstream there is another Green River, and it also has a Powell statue and museum, but the presence of our new bronze on Flaming Gorge Way casts aside the claims of the other pretender. “This is the place,” so to speak, and now we have a work of art to prove it.

            Although there was some vigorous discussion about exactly where to place the statue, the Museum Board is confident that the location in front of the museum meets the needs of all concerned, in terms of security, visibility and aesthetics.   The speedy and trouble-free site agreement between the City of Green River (which owns the statue) and Sweetwater County (which owns the land upon which it sits) hopefully demonstrates a new era of cooperation between the entities.  

            Cooperation has been evident as well with the various donors who contributed funds to the construct the statue’s base: the Union Pacific Foundation, the Sweetwater Historical Society, Wells Fargo Bank, Solvay Minerals,  High Desert Art Galleries and the Sweetwater County Historical Museum Foundation.  Museum Director Ruth Lauritzen deserves kudos for her efforts to secure funding and to find a site for the statue.  

            The Powell statue highlights what is perhaps best about our communities: a celebration of the past, and a spirit of civic cooperation that points toward a shiny future.  Don’t hesitate to view the new statue—it will be hard to miss!

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Curator's Corner       
Mark Nelson          

          The past summer proved to be not only hot, but rather busy as well. A number of the large artifacts that were stowed away behind  Gary ’s exhibit walls in the gallery now have a new home. Gary and I moved these items to our  offsite storage facility. As a result, these objects have a storage area of their own and  Gary has increased his exhibit space.

            I am continuing with the cataloging of the collection base on information found on old catalog cards. This is quite a project and will take some time to complete. The effort will pay great dividends, however, as the database and our knowledge of the collection continues to grow.         The IO computer system seems to be working out nicely. One of the added benefits of this system is that it utilizes a larger format for artifact photographs than previous versions of our catalog system. Subsequently, I have spent a good deal of time photographing various artifacts from the collection and then adding these images to the catalog records.

            Summer witnessed not only an increase in our visitation, but also the number of donations to the museum as well. The museum received a total of nine accessions during the period of June through August. Items include children’s clothing, photographs, Union Pacific artifacts, a Chinese teapot, lamps, and a centrifuge machine.

With the onslaught of winter the negative scanning project will resume.  A variety of small glass plate  negative collections are slated for scanning in the near future.  Stop by the museum if you re interested in seeing the results of this continuing project.  As always, you are invited to visit me in the basement and see the storage facility for yourself.

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Exhibits Roundup  
Gary Perkins

I worked with Virginia Tominc and my wife Criss setting up a new display on medicine in Sweetwater County at the county hospital in August. We used our collection of fashion dolls dressed in historical nursing costumes to illustrate the story of nursing. The dolls were made by the nursing students at  Western Wyoming Community College when  Virginia was the instructor. We also used a reproduction of Florence Nightingale’s dress and a 1940 period nursing uniform from Wyoming General Hospital, (the old name for the county hospital), in the display. We took the dolls out of the county health offices display. The county health offices are in the old hospital building in downtown  Rock Springs . Mark Nelson and I plant to put metal toys in the two showcases we have at that site.

            Toys will also replace the exhibit on the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Posse now in the temporary section of the main museum gallery in November for our Christmas display. In addition to toys, I will display a mannequin dressed in the Santa Claus suit donated by Kenneth Christoffersen. The suit was bought in the 1960s and used for many years by Ed “Chris” and Kenneth Christoffersen, to bring Christmas cheer to local children and groups.

            After the Christmas display is taken down we will mount (albeit a month late) an temporary exhibit on aviation. December will be the 100th anniversary of the Wright brother’s first flight. Featured will be a facsimile of Joe Bozovich’s log book. Bozovich, a coal miner and later an archaeologist, owned an airplane in Rock Springs in 1933. Other items from the war in the air in World War I will be on display as well as pieces of the first plane to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1919. (No, it was not flown by Lindbergh—he was the first to fly from New York City to  Paris).

            I changed the layout of the gallery to make it more spacious. I was able to bring back for display the antique stove, washing machine, icebox, and a sewing machine. I  moved things around to make room for an exhibit on oil production in the county. I am going to replace the Bill Stroud exhibit with a medical display and the ranching items currently on exhibit with be replaced with ladies’ fashion items. 

            I expanded the railroad exhibit with another showcase and new wall text posters. In the new showcase I placed a representative example of each type of railroad china in our collection. Also included were matchbooks, souvenir pencils, and other advertising items given out by the railroad company. A safety award for the Overland Express was also added as well as examples of all the railroad lanterns in our collections. I think we now have representative examples of just about everything from our railroad  collections, (with the exceptions of photographs),  that will fit into a showcase on display. 

            I had planned to install a N-gauge train model of the Green River yards built by Wallace C. Suggs, a former resident of Green River who now lives in  Garden Grove,  California. Bob Malonek bought the train set from Suggs and drove a rented truck all the way to  California to bring back the set. Bob also bought another set (HO-scale) that he has donated to the Golden Hour Senior Citizen’s Center. Our new set, even though it is a small scale model, was still over sixty feet long when I put it together. I realized then that there are some sections, buildings, and other parts missing from our model. Bob will be going back to California later this year to find the missing pieces. I am pondering where we can put such a large model in the gallery. I might have to adapt it to the space available. 

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Director's Report
Ruth Lauritzen

In recent months we have had the pleasure of hosting two book signings for authors of new historical books. Researching and writing a book involves a lot of time and  work and we were happy to be able to celebrate this accomplishment with two different authors. 

            In May we hosted Linda Lawrence Hunt who presented a program on her book, Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America . Helga was a farm woman from  Washington state who walked across  America in 1896. Her journey was an attempt to win a $10,000 award offered by an anonymous benefactor who, in part, wanted to promote reform dress for women. Helga and her nineteen-year-old daughter followed the route of the Union Pacific Railroad through  Wyoming.

           It was wonderful to meet Linda and learn about her research on this topic in women's history.  It was also interesting to learn that the story of Helga came to her attention through a paper written by one of her descendants for a History Day project.  History Day is a program which highlights historical research for middle and high school students and is pet project of the Wyoming State Historical Society.

            Following her visit to Sweetwater County I was happy to try to continue her research in local papers and to make contacts with other sources of historical information across southern  Wyoming . Unfortunately I have not yet been able to find any further mention of Mrs. Estby in surviving local papers. 

            Our second book signing was held in late September for Tom Cullen and his new book, Roamin’ Wyomin’: Circilin’  Great Divide Basin . Cullen is a long-time Historical Society member who lives in  Portland,  Oregon . He was born and raised in Rock Springs and, in spite of having lived far away for many years, still considers it home. His ramblings on the back roads and byways of southwestern  Wyoming have provided the information for his new book. Tom visited the museum many times on these trips to  Wyoming to research, or just to say hello. 

            Helping researchers is an important part of what we do at the museum. Sometimes we never hear from a researcher again, but often we do. They are a gracious group who sometimes send flowers, treats and donations. They also frequently give us copies of their work to add to our museum library. 

            It is always exciting when we can help find that important nugget of information, and it is doubly rewarding when the results of that research make it into print. These publications enrich our pool of local history resources and, for us, are cause for celebration.   

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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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