The Park City Museum:
A New Place for Old History
Douglas Burke
After a two-year, $8.9 million renovation, The Park City Museum on Main Street has reopened, delighting visitors with its state-of-the-art interactive exhibits. The museum focuses on three areas of the Park City experience: the history of our silver mining town; the subsequent transition to a ski resort; and the people of Park City, from Susanah Bradford Emery Holmes, the Silver Queen, to Stein Eriksen, the skiing king.
Before the expansion of the present museum, only five percent of its collection of 40,000 artifacts and photographs could be displayed at any one time, even though by 2007, 70,000 visitors flocked annually through its crowded 1,500-square-foot exhibition space. Now visitors can roam through 5,400 square feet of exhibits spread over three floors, shop in the expanded museum store, or peruse historic photographs, maps and books in the Hal Compton Research Library. A changing gallery near the famous Bell Tower will house different exhibits during the year, making repeat visits a must.
The first taste of treasures to come begins in the museum lobby, where a moving ceiling exhibit, The Time Traveler, depicts small objects representing Park City’s past. If you can resist the museum store, move on to Picture Yourself, where you can step in front of one of five backdrops, take a souvenir photo and become an instant character from Park City’s history. As you enter the main gallery, you will notice the MegaMine, a two-story model of the Ontario Mine in the 1880s complete with a working Cornish Pump, horses (yes, horses labored underground for up to eight years in the mines), and dollhouse-sized miners mucking and drilling to extract valuable silver ore. Adjacent to the MegaMine is the famous Kimball Stagecoach which brought so many immigrants to Park City. Mannequins representing the many ethnic groups who lived in the area look like they just stepped off the stagecoach, or later, off the reproduction of a Union Pacific train. Step into the train car and view a film about Park City’s place in western American history.
One of the most important enterprises in a western mining town was its general store. The display of the Smith & Brim Meats and Groceries Market contains many of its original fixtures. Storage bins show the grains and other staples that immigrants relied on for food. In the corner stands a large bucket of pig fat that thrifty customers used for making soap. Next to Smith & Brim is the display Staying Connected, featuring the telephone company’s old switchboard and early post office boxes. Try your hand at the switchboard and see how hard an operator had to work to keep up with the many calls in town. On the other side of the Smith & Brim exhibit is the Park City Theatre, with its ancient popcorn machine and a reproduction of the original Egyptian Theatre advertisement curtain. (The real backdrop went through a meticulous conservation process, but was ultimately deemed too fragile for display and is now stored in the Museum collection). A flat screen television runs two short films describing theater life back in the 1920s and the Sundance Film Festival experience starting in the 1980s. One of the most interesting exhibits in the main gallery is an interactive topographical model showing the labyrinth of mine tunnels under Park City’s mountains. Push various buttons and you’ll see the mines underneath some of the runs that you ski upon.
The museum pays homage to the rich cast of characters that have defined Park City from the past to the present. Muckers and Millionaires contrasts the life in Park City for the miners eking out a living to those that “made it rich.” The Silver Queen’s elaborate evening gown is juxtaposed against a miner’s slicker in a case filled with memorabilia. In a nod to the more recent past, tales at Bar Talk recall stories of well-known ski bums, hippies, and miners who often didn’t see eye-to-eye on the state of their changing town.
The development of skiing from the 1960s through the 2002 Olympics is featured throughout the museum. From the lower level, look up to see the evolution of equipment from wooden skis to Burton snowboards. Downstairs, step into the short-lived Skier’s Subway from the 1960s and watch a video about how these cars transported skiers three miles up the Spiro mine tunnel to access the Park City Ski Resort. After a trip through the icy, dripping mine tunnel, skiers often resembled popsicles when they emerged.
In the old museum, children rushed downstairs to see the Territorial Jail. The ever-popular jail has now been enhanced with The Mug Book: turn its pages to see and hear the sad tales of criminals who often etched their names or initials on the walls of their cells. But the two big attractions on the lower level are the Mine Drill, which lets museum-goers “drill” into a rock face, and Pay Dirt, a re-production detonator that mimics a dynamite explosion.
From its beginnings in 1984 in the historic City Hall building, our newly renovated museum has come a long way. What was once a dream shared by a few visionaries is now a destination attraction in the heart of Park City’s Main Street. With a dedicated staff led by the museum’s Executive Director Sandra Morrison and a legion of volunteers, the museum is able to offer historic skiing and hiking tours, walking tours, docent tours, educational programs and events, which all carry out the museum’s prime mission of preserving, protecting and promoting Park City’s heritage.
During the renovation, special attention was given to preserving what is known as the oldest building on Main Street according to National Preservation guidelines. The original brick and stone are visible from the new gallery, and in the dungeon you can see the charred timbers of The Great Fire of 1898. From a replica of The Park Record tent and the original typewriter that produced an edition of the paper only a week after the fire, to a 1927 fire engine, to the state-of-the art skis and snowboards of today, the Park City Museum celebrates the uniqueness of Park City in a fabulous new venue.
Wendy Lavitt, the author of six books and many magazine articles, lives in Park City and is a member of the Park City Museum Board of Trustees.
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