Museum History
The Green River Valley Museum was begun in 1990 with the support
and impetus of the Centennial Committe under the direction of Maicille
Carr. She wrote the first grant obtained from the Wyoming Council
of the Humanities and directed the first project which was on early brands
of the area. Dele Ball was instrumental in providing inspiration,
as was Dick Tanner, the first president. The Town of Big Piney provided
the building and the Chrisman family donated two additional lots in 1993.
The first board of directors consisted of Dick Tanner, Bette Thompson,
Marjorie Guio, Barbara McKinley, Jay Fear, George Nichols and Nancy Espenscheid.
Marjorie and Barbara continue on the board today.
The building itself has an interesting history. It belonged
to the Town of Big Piney and at various times has served as a town hall,
fire station and jail, then later as a storage facility. The original
structure burned in 1948, leaving the charred metal jail cell exposed to
the elements. Having nowhere else to hold prisoners, law enforcement
officers continued to use the cell to hold them until they could be moved
to a more suitable location. When the building was rebuilt, it was
constructed around the jail cell. The jail cell today is one of the
museum's most popular attractions.
The following article by Nancy Espenscheid is reprinted from
"The Sublette County Journal," March 13, 1998:
I really don't know whose idea it was to have a
museum in Big Piney. I think it was either Maicille Carr's or Barbara
McKinley's, probably a spin off of the momentum Maicille had going from
all of the Wyoming Cenennial activities (she was affectionately nicknamed
Ms. Centennial). I do remember that it was Barbara who called me
to ask if I would be on the board to get one going. Although I knew
full well I didn't have much time to give to such a project, I was so in
favor of the idea that I said yes. Thus, I had the privilege of witnessing
and to a small degree participating in the beginning of the Green River
Valley Museum.
I soon found myself on a road trip to Kemmerer with
Dick Tanner, Marj Guio, Bette Thompson, and Barbara McKinley to see the
Kemmerer Museum and to talk to the people running it. None of us
really knew where to start. We weren't really starting with anything-no
building, no collection of artifacts, and certainly no money. We
had lots of ideas though, which we tossed back and forth amid lots of laughter
and story-telling on our trip to and from Kemmerer. The people we
talked to gave us a lot of good advice and gave us some sobering warnings.
The ideas we had on the way home from Kemmerer were more realistic than
the ones we had on the way down.
Initially, we were given some focus by a small Wyoming
Humanities Grant which Maicille, Jonita Sommers, and Ann Noble had obtained.
The grant was for a project which would research and record the histories
of the early brands of Sublette County, and the Museum became the avenue
through which the results of the project would be displayed and presented
to the public.
By the word "Museum" we were still a long way from
talking about a place. Our first exhibit, which was in fact the Brands
Exhibit, took place in the High School Annex. Our next took place
in the back of the Town Hall. We spent a lot of time hauling things
around!
When I think of what has happened to the Green River
Valley Museum since then, it warms my heart! There has been a virtual
army of volunteers involved in the progression of the Museum. I could
not even begin to give an appropriate amount of credit to all of the people
who have worked on Museum projects at one time or another. My recollections
of Marj Guio, Barbara McKinley and Bette Thompson scrubbing and painting
provide me with an image which has typified the kind of people who put
the very heart of the museum in its place. That image is a personification
of the energy and determination that has gone into the museum's development.
The idea behind the Green River Valley Museum was
not conceived to draw tourists or boost the economy. There have been
no major wealthy benefactors to support it. Instead, it is simply
a wonderful example of the efforts of a community which wanted to articulate
and preserve its history
If all else fails, a community can hold itself together
by its shared experiences and shared collective memories. It is by
the accumulation of stories of these things that we know and trust each
other. Wendall Berry expresses this so well in his essay, The Work
of Local Culture: "A human community must collect its stories and
turn them into account. It must build that memory of itself - in
lore and story and song - which will be its culture."
The Green River Valley Museum has been instrumental
in helping us define and honor our culture.