SMITHSONIAN TRAVELING EXHIBIT OPENS IN GREEN RIVER
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Photo #1 - Sweetwater County Historical Museum Director Dave Mead and Richelle Rawlings-Carroll of the Sweetwater County Museum Foundation presented Faith Duncan with her $100 essay prize on Thursday. Faith is a junior at the Green River High School.
Photo #2 - Zaundra Hamilton of the Sweetwater County Museum Foundation and Dave Mead, director of the Sweetwater County Historical Museum, present Jessica Lee Petri her $1,000 scholarship prize for her essay “Carnegie Capitalism: An Analysis of the Importance of Philanthropy in Maintaining a Free Economy.”
(Sweetwater County, Wyo. - August 6, 2021) The Sweetwater County Historical Museum and its not-for-profit partner, the Sweetwater County Museum Foundation, have announced the winners of 2021's Scholarship Program and Essay Contest.
Scholarship Winner
Jessica Lee Petri of Green River, a new freshman at the University of Wyoming, won a $1,000 scholarship for her essay, “Carnegie Capitalism: An Analysis of the Importance of Philanthropy in Maintaining a Free Economy.”
Essay Winner
Faith Duncan, a junior at the Green River High School, submitted her essay entitled “How Local History Inspired Me to Use My Voice to Spread Change” and won a $100 prize.
Funding for the contest’s awards was provided by the Sweetwater County Museum Foundation.
The museum’s director, Dave Mead, joined the rest of the museum staff in congratulating the winners, whose essays will be published soon in the Rock Springs Rocket-Miner and the Green River Star.
- Two babies photographed in his photo car by W.A. Bradley, identified as twins, the “Cary Babies.” Bradley charged $3.00 per dozen for copies. - (Sweetwater County Historical Museum photo)
(Sweetwater County, Wyo. - July 20, 2021) Frontier-era cameramen once roamed the west in special railroad cars configured as traveling studios called “photo cars.”
Photo cars were converted cabooses, fitted out with a small studio, a skylight for illumination, a darkroom, and living quarters for the photographer. Historians believe the first was J.B. Silvis, who began traveling the Union Pacific tracks in his photo car in 1870. His photo car made frequent stops, with people all along the line eager to have their pictures taken. Business was brisk and Silvis could make $100 per day. (His success did not go unnoticed by the criminal element. In Evanston, Wyoming, in 1881, he was awakened in his car one night by a burglar armed with an iron bar. Silvis shot the intruder, who fled.)
Silvis retired in 1882. In its collection, the Sweetwater County Historical Museum in Green River has portraits taken by another such roving photographer, W.A. Bradley, who continued operating the photo car until at least 1889.
The Sweetwater County Historical Museum is located at 3 E. Flaming Gorge Way in Green River. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and admission is free.
(Sweetwater County, Wyo. - June 30, 2021) A new firearms exhibit - the first in a series - is now complete and on display at the Sweetwater County Historical Museum in Green River.
“Single Action Revolvers” is the first of a planned series of exhibits titled “Firearms of the American West.” The exhibit features six vintage revolvers, a contemporary Ruger Vaquero,
and an Uberti reproduction of the Colt Walker of 1847, a huge pistol that was, arguably, the most important handgun in American history; a powerful, six-shot percussion revolver that
rescued the Colt company from certain bankruptcy.
The Walker reproduction and Ruger Vaquero are included in the exhibit to provide museum visitors the opportunity to handle a single-action percussion revolver as well as a cartridge revolver, if they so desire. Upon request, patrons can request the “hands-on” feature from museum staff, which includes a short presentation about single-action revolvers on the frontier.
Among the handguns in the exhibit are the .44-caliber Remington New Model Army percussion revolver that belonged to “Big Nose” George Parrot, and old west highwayman and cattle rustler. In 1878, Parrot and his gang murdered a Carbon County, Wyoming, deputy sheriff named Robert Widdowfield and Union Pacific special agent Tip Vincent in the wake of a bungled train robbery not far from Medicine Bow. Parrot was later arrested in Montana and returned to Rawlins, the county seat of Carbon County, for trial. He was sentenced to hang on April 2, 1881, but attempted a jailbreak, fracturing the skull of a jailer in the process. After the failed escape, a lynch mob took him from his cell and hanged him from a telephone pole.
Murderous in life, Parrott’s story was bizarre in death. Two doctors named Thomas Maghee and John Eugene Osborne took charge of Parrott's body after his death. The top of his skull was sawed off and is believed to have been used as an ashtray. Much of his skin was removed, tanned, and incorporated into a pair of shoes, which Osborne wore to his inaugural ball after being elected Governor of Wyoming.
Also included in the exhibit is a special display of Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office badges; some from the museum’s collection, and others on loan from Gary Bailiff, himself a retired Sheriff of Sweetwater County and Sweetwater County Commissioner, and Betty Blackwell of the High Desert Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
The museum is located at 3 East Flaming Gorge Way in Green River. Hours are 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Tuesday through Saturday, and admission is free.
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