November 2010

Since 1897, Cheyenne has been home to one of the largest celebrations of the western frontier. It began as a one day rodeo, but has grown to become a two week celebration including, besides the now ten day rodeo, parades and exhibits on frontier and Native American life.

The museum has one of the nation's largest collections of historic horse-drawn carriages and wagons. From authentic stages to early ice and milk wagons to rare Drop Front Phaetons, the nearly 150 carriages and wagons in the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum collection chronicle the colorful pioneer history of Cheyenne and the expansion of the American West. It also has some of the nation's most celebrated western art exhibitions. The museum also contains a kids room which contains interactive learning activities such as costumes and hide painting.

Nearly 500,000 people traveled the Oregon, Mormon, California and Pony Express Trails between 1840 and 1870. Outdoor informational kiosks welcome visitors and present various “jumping off points” of these designated national historic trails.
Inside the building, the facility’s theatre showcases composite characters traveling the trails: Native Americans, explorers and mountain men, emigrants and Pony Express riders. These diorama figures represent Native cultures and the thousands of people who emigrated west.
An original 18-minute multi-media program, Footsteps to the West, is shown in the theatre on a regular basis. Special events and living history presentations also take place periodically in the theatre.

The museum offers guided tours of the thirty-room mansion. The rooms are filled with artifacts of life on a Western Plains town as it built up around the railroad. The mansion was built by Edward Ivinson in 1892.

Ivinson arrived in Laramie in 1868 on the first train to Laramie. Upon arrival, he started out a church, established a prison for the Wyoming Territory, and opened a bank. Ivinson remained tied to the life of the town, serving on the first Board of Trustees of the University of Wyoming, helping to promote the railroad, and building the town’s first Episcopalian Church.

Jim Gatchell came to Buffalo in 1900 to establish a drug store on Buffalo’s Main Street. He not only served the settlers and frontiersman of the area, but the members of the Lakota and the Northern Cheyenne in the area. The Cheyenne gave him the name of “Turpy” which means “He who speaks for them”.
Because of these relationships on both sides of the frontier struggle, Gatchell came to amass a collection of artifacts in the store room of his drug store, such a Springfield rifle gifted to him by the Cheyenne Shave Head.

Unfortunately, the first lighthouse built was destroyed during the Civil War. However, the construction of a second lighthouse was completed in 1872 just west of the original. The lighthouse keeper's dwelling is a unique Victorian design with strong architectural details. Today, with the assistance of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, the light continues as an Aid to Navigation, shining seaward every night and during inclement weather. The lighthouse is part of the Coastal Georgia Historical Society.

It presents interpretive exhibits, both permanent and temporary, educational programs, and special events that relate to the Ridge family and Cherokee history and culture. The Chieftains Museum operates as a private, non-profit organization committed to telling the story of the house, while preserving the site for future generations.

The Sewall-Belmont House and Museum is the headquarters of the historic National Woman's Party and was the Washington home of its founder and Equal Rights Amendment author Alice Paul.

Sewall-Belmont, named in the first Save America's Treasures legislation, is the only museum in the nation's capital dedicated to preserving and showcasing a crucial piece of our history—the fight for the American woman's right to vote. This struggle is documented through one of the most significant collections in the country focused on the suffrage and equal rights movements.

The Museum, a National Historic Landmark, offers educational programming and is open for public tours five days a week. The archive is open by appointment only to students and researchers who wish to utilize the unique and extensive collection of rare books, photographs, scrapbooks, and personal papers.

Completed in 1839 for Major James Stephens Bulloch, one of Roswell's founders, Bulloch Hall is a Greek Revival structure and one of the South's finest examples of true temple-form architecture.The house is beautifully furnished with authentic period furniture. The house includes a Museum Room with history of the family. The grounds include reconstructed slave quarters, privy, summer house, wells, gardens, and museum shop.

In addition to housing archives, the society prepares displays, exhibits, and published works that encourage understanding of local history.

Learn more about Ashland’s past with a visit to the Ashland Historical Society Museum. Dedicated to preserving the local past, the society strives to collect not only artifacts, but oral and written memories taken from elder residents.