Museum

buffalo soldiers: reVision

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THE FORT GARLAND MUSEUM and Cultural Center continues to establish unique exhibits that highlight not just an honest look at local history but also combine that with art, poetry and more to create immersive cultural experiences. Their newest exhibit, buffalo soldiers: reVision opened on June 24 and follows in the same vein of striking, multifaceted …

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Places: The Silver Cliff Museum

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By Doris Dembowsky There’s nothing like a museum for allowing parents and grandparents to reminisce. Walking from room to room, you’ll hear them saying, “I remember when ….” Those reminiscences wrap adults in warm family stories. As for historically challenged youth, they’re wide-eyed, looking at life as it was before TV and computers. The Silver …

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The Sanford Museum: Memories of the Past

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By Mary Pope-Cornum

Sitting in the middle of the main street of Sanford, Colorado is a white-washed, Spanish-style adobe building. A hand-painted sign above the door declares this the Sanford Museum. The sign was arranged for by one of the museum’s originators, Gary Bailey, and painted by a missionary who was in the area at the time. The museum was initiated by Sanford native Mary June Peterson Miller, who wrote a historical book about Sanford titled We Call it Home. She passed away in 2015.

The building, which houses the museum is a museum in-and-of itself as part of the area’s history. It was built in 1937 as a government project through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Since that time it has housed a community center, firehouse, town hall, church meetings and band practice rooms for local students. An aerial lookout tower was built around 1955.

The decision to convert the building to a museum was made in 1995. The building has four rooms including a Pike’s Stockade room, with a mock-up of Zebulon Pike’s stockade and information regarding it. In other rooms, military uniforms hang along walls, with pictures and tributes to those who wore them. A plat of the town shows all the properties and their residents and visitors like to look for relatives’ houses on it.

Artifacts such as dresses, dolls and pictures were contributed by many families to commemorate their ancestors. Displays include an old cast iron stove, irons, dishes, appliances, and pictures of days gone by. Most of the history on display starts in the years after Sanford was settled in the late 1880s, with only a little of the earliest history of the town, which was settled by early Mormons migrating from Utah and the southern states, including a band of Catawba Indians who were part of the early Mormon settlers. Descendants of the Catawba still live in the area.

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The ‘Stack Turns 100

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By Susan Jesuroga Beyond the old brick storefronts in downtown Salida and the ghost of the rail yard, long dismantled, there is still one tall and unmistakable symbol of Salida’s industrial past. This sight is familiar to any traveler entering Salida from the north: the 365-foot smelter smokestack. In the late 1800s, Western states saw …

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The Saguache County Museum

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By Connie Rapalski

The Saguache County Museum began as an idea that grew into a huge community project. At the time, all Colorado communities were asked to join in the 1976 Centennial celebration of the Rush to the Rockies, which brought miners and other pioneers to Colorado. Several clubs including the Saguache Women’s Club along with the Community Council started a movement to Save Our Jail. A museum was chosen because the jail and the old Jailer’s Home were scheduled to be torn down. The museum was originally to be located there for only a year, but now, 59 years later it remains in the same location.

The old jail was built in 1908, and the 1870s residence was built by Otto Mears. Neither building was in good shape. It took a lot of volunteers and donations to turn the house and yard into something suitable to hold a collection.

Unsolicited, people from Villa Grove, Center, Crestone, Hooper and Saguache began donating items. The museum started with a Nutmeg Grinder and two broken show cases.

In 1972, the Memorial Room was added, thanks to donations. In 2004, the museum secured $170,000 in grants and used it to add on the Virginia Sutherland Room. Originally, Sutherland headed up the museum committee for her club. She served as Chairman of the Museum for 56 years, and today continues on the Board of Directors as Chairman Emeritus. 

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The South Park City Museum

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By Laura Van Dusen

At South Park City Museum in Fairplay, time stands still.

Visitors there can wander through buildings salvaged from the gold and silver mining craze of the 1860s-1890s. They can touch the furnishings, sit in the chairs or even lie in the beds once occupied by frontier Colorado miners and railroad tycoons. One can visit a frontier Masonic lodge, a drugstore full of pre-1900s remedies or an old-time saloon complete with a wall-sized oil painting of the lovely unclad “Rachel. ”

The painting once graced the walls of the historic Antlers Hotel in Colorado Springs (since replaced by the Antlers Hilton).

Abandoned ghost buildings are tough to find these days in their original environment, which makes the collection at South Park City all the more fascinating.

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Pride of the Pioneers

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By Polly Oberosler
The Gunnison County Pioneer and Historical Society was formed in 1905. By 1906 they had decided that they would work toward the establishment of a local museum to conserve the rich heritage they were a part of. Although the Pioneer Society was active, the idea of a museum did not officially come to be until 1963, when the Adams and Wilson families donated five acres of land to start the project. The museum itself opened its doors in the summer of 1964.

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Saguache Museum is the core of the community

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Article by Martha Quillen

Museums – May 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine

In his 1959 book, Guide to the Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps, Perry Eberhart says, “Saguache is almost as colorful today as it was during its early years. One of the few county seats in Colorado without a railroad, Saguache has retained its frontier personality. Cowboys still dress the part here. The city is interesting and prosperous.

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The Little Engines that Can, in Buena Vista

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Article by Martha & Ed Quillen

Museums – May 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine

Before the turn of the century, central Colorado boasted nearly 600 miles of railroads — the main lines of the Denver & Rio Grande, the Colorado Midland, and the Denver, South Park and Pacific, as well as branches to Westcliffe, Crestone, and Monarch.

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The third landmark in Silver Cliff

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Article by Hal Walter

Musuems – May 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine

Really, there are only three landmarks in the Wet Mountain Valley town of Silver Cliff. Two are taverns; the other, the Silver Cliff Museum.

If you happen to stumble out of the Silver Dome or Clever’s on a bright summer afternoon and need a sobering thought, walk — don’t drive — down the road a block or two to the museum. Author John K. Aldrich, who wrote Ghosts of the Sangre de Cristo Area, said the Silver Cliff Museum was one of the best he’d seen.

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Leadville leads in quality and variety

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Article by Lynda La Rocca

Museums – May 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine

Leadville has been called a lot of things over the years. Some nicknames — Two-Mile-High City, Cloud City, Magic City — are picturesque; many others are unprintable.

A rarely mentioned, but truly deserved, sobriquet is “Museum Capital of Colorado.” With more than half a dozen such attractions, Leadville offers about one museum for every 500 residents, which might qualify it as “Per-Capita Museum Leader of the Observable Universe.” And one museum even doubles as the temporal lodging for the city’s resident deity, a friendly, bearded individual who goes by the name of L.G. (“Living God”) Cosmos.

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Salida Museum has a little bit of everything

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Article by Martha Quillen Museums – May 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine History can’t be toted on a cash register, nor added up like so many numbers and presented with unfailing accuracy — for history is a living thing, wholly reliant on those who feed and nurture it. South Park City has breathed life into …

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South Park City displays daily life

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Article by Martha Quillen

Museums – May 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine

In 1885, Leadville was the second largest city in Colorado with 16,000 citizens, three daily newspapers, two weeklies, two hospitals, two telephone companies, eight schools, seven churches, three Masonic lodges, two Odd Fellow lodges, thirteen hotels, two railroads, eight smelting and reduction works, an uncountable number of mining operations both large and small, plus a gas company, a water works company and an electric lights company.

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