SLIDESHOW: Park City Museum
PARK CITY -- Beverly Munsing came all the way from Pennsylvania to ski the slopes of Park City.
"Except my knee is killing me," Munsing says -- so today she's taking a different look at skiing by wandering through the newly renovated Park City Museum.
Snow is a major player in the history of this Wasatch Mountain town, but so is silver, and Munsing says she finds the mining exhibits of ore cars, blasting caps and the like fascinating.
"And (all) the different ethnic groups that came into the area," the Wyomissing, Pa., resident says. "I'm from the East, so the whole opening of the West is interesting to me -- sounds like a big adventure."
The grand adventure of settling this mining-camp-turned-ski-mecca is the theme of the 25-year-old museum, which reopened in October after an $8.9 million makeover. Gone is a cramped and noisy "five-minute walk-through"; now visitors can spend an hour or two exploring three floors and 12,000 square feet of exhibits.
"Ninety percent of our artifacts were in storage (before), so visitors couldn't see them," says executive director Sandra Morrison.
Now there's plenty of room to hang an old red ski gondola from the ceiling, or drape a replica of a vintage advertising canvas across the stage of a simulated Egyptian Theatre.
One of visitor Lynn Telling's favorites is the "skier subway," a set of rusty yellow cars that once transported skiers to the slopes through old water-dripping mining shafts.
"I've never heard tell of that," the West Chester, Ohio, resident says.
But a do-it-yourself detonator in the mining display also grabs his attention.
"If you were a kid," Telling quips, "you'd like blasting the rock."
That old thing?
Instead of history being just dry lists of people and dates, Morrison hopes visitors discover it can also be fun. Interactive exhibits let folks try their luck at drilling a hole in the rock or let them "meet" infamous criminals in a video "mug book," like Patrick ("Call me Patsy") Coughlin, executed for a murder he committed after stealing strawberries from a peddler's cart and selling them to a town madam.
"It's very informative, not too much to read but enough to tell you what's happening," says Mary Telling, visiting with husband Lynn.
Annelise Simmons, a skier from Charleston, S.C., says, "It's kind of changed our view of how Park City started."
Simmons says she was surprised to learn of the prejudices against Chinese residents in the town, and to discover Park City was so set apart from the rest of Mormon-settled Utah.
The museum began as a temporary exhibit for the town's centennial celebration in 1984. Collecting materials then was difficult, says former museum director Patricia Smith, because townspeople didn't see any value in old miners' tin lunch boxes, ski-lift tickets or high school sweaters.
" 'This is just common stuff -- why would you save it?' they'd say," says Smith, a Park City artist.
Hard labor
Today, the Park City Museum occupies three historic structures on Main Street: the old city hall and territorial jail, built in 1885; the library, built in 1900, and the whistle tower, built in 1901. A new 5,500-square foot addition, with contemporary architecture, was added behind the old buildings.
The expansion project was born after Utah's 2002 Winter Olympics found the museum overrun with 25,000 visitors in just 10 days, Morrison says.
"That was the big 'aha!' moment -- guess what? Everybody still loves history," she says.
For Gary Cumberland, one of the standouts in the new facility is the two-story scaled model of a working mine.
"You realize how hard it was," the Pensacola, Fla., resident says.
A mountain man re-enactor and history buff, Adam Pryanovich said the museum's renovation is "awesome."
"I'm definitely going to tell everybody who comes through town to stop here and see it," the Coalville resident said.
Star power
The new exhibits fill the museum, but archivist Emily Beeson says the collecting of artifacts continues as townspeople unearth more treasures.
"We're still taking things because we don't want them to be forgotten or thrown away," she says.
If history isn't your bag, the lure of celebrity might prompt a gander at these red brick buildings. Your feet are walking the same wooden floors that Orlando Bloom, Marisa Tomei, Mark Ruffalo and Bill Gates walked during the recent Sundance Film Festival when the museum became a site for media interviews.
Although the public couldn't visit during the festival, Morrison says, Sundance gave the museum exposure to a whole new clientele.
"On an average day" she says, "we weren't going to get Ben Affleck in here, or Sen. Barbara Boxer."
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SEVEN Funky Finds
* Silver purse: The perfect handbag for a Silver Queen, bearing her engraved initials. Susanna "Susie" Bransford Emery was her name, and she and her first husband were among Park City's mining millionaires. That swanky red and black dress is hers, too -- one of five of Susie's elegant gowns that rotate through the exhibit.
* Olympic beret: What better souvenir of Utah's 2002 Winter Olympics than a slouchy, sporty Roots beret? Folks couldn't buy them up fast enough eight years ago; now they're a museum piece, along with an Olympic relay torch.
* Blackened timbers: Look up at the charred ceiling of the basement jail. Built in 1885, the jail was one of few structures to survive the Great Park City Fire of 1898. The scorcher tore through a town that was "flammable right down to the wood sidewalks."
* Red light: Yes, that kind of red light. Every mining town had its "soiled doves," and many of Park City's lived on Heber Avenue, near the railroad depot. When a railroad worker went calling on one of the ladies, he'd hang his red lantern in the window to show the room was taken.
* Graffiti: Etched on a jail cell wall in candle smoke is the insignia of the Industrial Workers of the World, or the Wobblies. Groups like this tried to improve hazardous working conditions in the mines.
* "Hay burner": That's a horse, so nicknamed by miners. The miniature fellow is found among wee miners and ore cars in a scale cutaway of the Ontario Mine. Horses often lived in the mines for years; so did cats, who kept mice out of the stables.
* Charlie Chaplin: The silent-film star pops up in a video look at Park City's movie history, from the historic Egyptian Theatre to today's Sundance Film Festival. Chaplin came to town once and even invested in one of the mines.
Source: Park City Museum
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IF YOU GO
DRIVE TIME: About 1 1/2 hours from Ogden.
HOW TO GET THERE: Take Interstate 84 east through Weber Canyon; then Interstate 80 south toward Salt Lake City. Take Kimball Junction (Exit 145) at Park City and follow signs six miles on State Road 224 to Main Street.
HOURS: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-6 p.m. Sundays
ADMISSION: $10/adults, $5/children, free/6 and under
WHAT TO SEE: Start your journey on the red velvet seats of a train car, where a short film relates the history of the settling of the West. Various exhibits include an antique stagecoach and firetruck, a fully stocked general store, cells of an 1885 territorial jail, theater memorabilia and a look at the "Muckers and Millionaires" of Park City.
WHEN TO GO: The least crowded days are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday; the busiest are Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
EATING FACILITIES: No food at the museum but there are plenty of restaurants up and down Main Street. Guests may get a ticket to leave the museum for a lunch break and return later the same day.
ACCESSIBILITY: All levels of the building are accessible to people with disabilities.
SPECIAL EVENTS:
* "Tuesday Talks" begin at 5:30 p.m. March 2 in the museum conference room. The topic is the Park City music scene, and guests are welcome to share memories of any local concerts.
* "New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music," a Smithsonian exhibit, opens April 10 and runs through May 25. The traveling exhibit explores the contributions of many immigrant groups to such roots music forms as folk ballads, blues and gospel, and country.
* Guided walking tours of Historic Main Street are offered during the summer.
MISCELLANEOUS: Genealogists and history buffs may visit the on-site Hal Compton Research Library Monday through Friday; call for an appointment. Backpacks with hands-on activities for children are available. A gift shop in the museum lobby features artwork, gemstones, puzzles, dolls and other items.
PARKING: Free parking is available on Swede Alley and at the China Bridge Garage, both behind the museum. Metered parking is offered on Main Street. For more details, see the parking map on the museum's Web site.
INFORMATION: (435) 649-7457, www.parkcityhistory.org
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