World class treasures

The size of the Grand Encampment Museum (GEM) in Encampment and the Little Snake River Museum (LSRM) in Savery surprise visitors.

Although there is a main building where visitors start in both museums, GEM and LSRM are actually a collection of buildings that have artifacts displayed in all.

Both have houses that have furniture from days of past that give the visitor a real taste of what it was like to live in these communities 100 years ago.

The Grand Encampment Museum

Carbon County historian Nancy Anderson was one of the founders of the GEM and remembers the concept of a museum in Encampment coming together in 1960.

"I think Lora Webb Nichols had a museum in mind when she saved all the Grand Encampment Heralds," Anderson said. "Even the ranching and homestead families that have donated so much was because, in the old days, they would use the old stuff first and put the replacement purchases in the back and eventually these became items suitable for donation. We really have to thank the previous generations as the savers, which led to the formation of a museum."

Anderson said there were five men and five women on the founding board.

Of the founding board, Anderson said Hila Parkison, Eleanore Corum, Vera Oldman and herself had come to the Valley later.

"Vera and Hila married into old Valley families and myself married Victor who came from an old Carbon-Elk Mountain family, so I always kind of look at it as the women involved, as sort of outsiders," Anderson said "Carol Herring was the exception, she was a native."

Anderson said there is a legend of Parkison and Oldman meeting on the street one day and deciding to start the museum. Anderson is not sure that actually happened but she credited both ladies as being crucial in getting the museum going.

"The women were instrumental in laying the infrastructure of the museum and all were chosen by Vera. She was the instigator of the project and I believe she also got John Peryam involved and it was also Vera that said a council member from the town needed to be on the board and she asked which member wanted to be involved. They all wanted to be involved."

She said that is how Encampment mayor Dwayne Cruse, Dick Blake, Horace Harris and Butch Verplancke all became founding members of the GEM.

She said the first founding board was not elected. It was through this board the by laws were created. The park was chosen so that buildings could be added at a later date. She said Cruse was the contractor for the interpretative center. The center was named after Doc Culleton, a former employee of A Bar A Ranch, because the owner of the ranch, Andy Anderson, gave thousands of dollars worth of stock to the museum if the center was named after Culleton.

"From the very beginning we had anticipated the museum complex growing," Anderson said. "It was very ambitious but we had a lot of buildings that we felt were endangered that we wanted to get to the museum location. Frankly, there was a lot of vision and it was all volunteer."

She said the landscape was always important to the museum board and it is why the aesthetics are impressive.

"We wanted a place you could walk out and see a beautiful outside," Anderson said. "It really was important. It was about bringing all these fragments of culture and putting it all on a pleasing landscape."

Dick Blake remembers becoming involved to help the museum get on the park.

"I was on council in charge of the park," Blake said. "So I did what needed to be done. Then Carol (Herring) and Nancy helped with the plans of laying out the museum. I remember us going over what needed to be done and then I explained it to the council."

Both Blake and Anderson are happy with how the museum has grown over the years.

Anderson said she is also very happy with the job GEM director Tim Nicklas has been doing since he came.

"I can't say enough of how good he is," Anderson said. "Grand Encampment Museum has benefitted under his direction and his work on the new exhibits are amazing. I can honestly say I think GEM is a world class museum."

Anderson concluded that, although history can be gleaned off the internet, coming to the place where the history is made and seeing it in person is an experience that can't be replicated online.

Little Snake River Museum

Linda Fleming, resident of the Little Snake River Valley was a founding member of the LSRM back in the early 1980s. A unique aspect of this museum is that from the very beginning, the LSRM formed a museum district.

"There are only one or two other museum districts in the entire state," Flemeing said. "It was Rusty Cobb that came up with idea."

Cobb is not only responsible for getting the LSRM into a district, but she also was key in donating artifacts to the institution. She and her husband donated the Strobridge Home.

The home was built in 1888 for the Strobridge family. The home changed hands several times and was sold to Tom and Rusty Cobb in the late 1960's. The Cobb family donated the grand home, and it was moved to the museum December 19, 1993.

The Strobridge Home is one of 15 buildings on site at the LSRM.

Fleming said the idea of a museum started when the Savery high school was closed. Carbon County School District 1 donated the building to the community for the creation of the museum and to host different events. The ex school now houses exhibits, with five of the retired classrooms educating visitors on Snake River history through displays. Other buildings include. the Jim Baker Cabin built in 1873; The Blair Cabin, built in 1888 by a husband and wife with their hands and a broadax; mining tank from a local mine donated by Gilbert Williams, houses a mining display. There is also a Dixon Street building which houses several replicated businesses that used to be in Dixon.

Fleming said the hub of the Little Snake River Valley in the early 1900s was Dixon and the Dixon street is a good representation of what life was back a century ago.

According to Fleming, the Baker Cabin almost went to Denver instead of the museum. Baker has a stained glass window dedicated to him for his pioneering exploits in the state capital building in Denver and there had been a drive by Colorado to bring the cabin to Denver as an exhibit.

"We had a Wyoming person, I think from the college, get wind of it and the State of Wyoming got involved and took the cabin to Cheyenne where it was displayed for 25 to 30 years," Fleming said. "It started to deteriorate, so it was taken apart and numbered. Then Rusty (Cobb) got it to the Little Snake River Museum only to discover it had been numbered in pencil and it was faded. We put it together from looking at pictures."

Fleming said families over the years have donated buildings to give the museum the look of a small town.

The newest exhibit will be several sheep wagons donated by the MacPherson family. The grand opening of this display will be August 15. She said there will be education on sheep shearing and what life was like for the sheep herders of the area.

"We are making a sheep interpretive center," Fleming said. "Our museum also has excellent gardens throughout thanks to our director, Lela Emmons, and, besides being beautiful, people can taste vegetables we grow. Imagine what it is like for a person to eat a fresh carrot from the ground for the first time at a museum."

Fleming said the LSRM is a treasure.

World Class Treasures

GEM and LSRM constantly surprise visitors with their size and scope of artifacts and exhibits.

To take words from Anderson and Flemings, both museums are world class treasures that just happen to be located in two small towns just a mountain apart.