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County Museum receives special visitor

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Missy Frederick stands in a floral dress in front of the cataract boat on display as part of the Reynold's exhibit. Right top A.K. reynolds and his wife stand together. Bottom right President John F. Kennedy stands at a podium for the starting of the Flaming Gorge Dam in 1963.

Composite Photo #1 - Missy Frederick of Seattle, Washington, a descendant of Adrian and A.K. Reynolds, visited the Sweetwater County Historical Museum recently to check out its dual-themed exhibit commemorating the Reynolds family legacy of running the Green River and the 60th anniversary of the Flaming Gorge Dam’s startup.

 

County Museum receives special visitor

(Sweetwater County, Wyo. - June 5, 2024)    The Sweetwater County Historical Museum was host to a special visitor last week.

Missy Frederick of Seattle is the great -granddaughter of Adrian Reynolds, once the publisher of the Green River Star, and the grand-niece of A.K. Reynolds and Ellen Reynolds, who owned and operated a river-running service on the Green River in the years before the Flaming Gorge Dam was completed. Missy traveled from Washington to see the museum’s special exhibit in the Community Room at the County Courthouse, a dual commemoration of the Reynolds family’s legacy and the construction of the Flaming Gorge Dam from 1958 to 1964.

The exhibit’s centerpiece is one of the Reynolds’s two handmade, 17-foot wooden cataract boats, on long-term loan from the Uintah County Heritage Museum in Vernal. The exhibit opened officially on September 27, 2023, the 60th anniversary of the dam’s inauguration on September 27, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy personally pressed a button during a special ceremony at the airport in Salt Lake City and brought the dam online.

Also featured is a continuous showing of the film Face Your Danger – The Story of A.K. Reynolds & the Cataract Boat and film footage of the dam’s startup ceremony in 1963. In addition, the museum prepared dozens of framed photographs for display on the walls of public areas throughout the courthouse, depicting the dam during its six years of construction.

The exhibit officially closes in mid-July, 2024, and the Reynolds cataract boat is scheduled for future display at the Powell Museum in Page, Arizona. In the meanwhile, it remains open during normal Courthouse business hours, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday.