|
Register Staff
10-16-2008 Time was moving too fast for a group of concerned Inyo County residents in 1928. They were concerned that “rapid changes” in the Owens Valley were overtaking and overrunning the region’s rich history, and threatening to destroy the area’s historic, social and archeological record. The young men were determined to preserve that history for the generations to come.
That concern about the pace of change 80 years ago led to the creation of the Eastern California Museum Association, a volunteer group which immediately started to collect, catalog and preserve the history of Inyo County and the Sierra. While plenty has changed in the Owens Valley and Inyo County in the intervening eight decades, the ideals that first drove the Eastern California Museum Association have not.
Indeed, the concept of making a concerted effort to preserve and interpret the area’s history remains alive and well and is embodied by the Friends of the Eastern California Museum. That volunteer group, which provides financial support and in-kind contributions to the museum, is the direct descendant of the Eastern California Museum Association. And so is the current Eastern California Museum, which the association started and ran for 40 years before relinquishing the collection and the obligation to maintain the museum to Inyo County.  The Eastern California Museum Association, which started preserving the history of the Owens Valley 80 years ago this year, hosted many outings, picnics, lectures and other gatherings which combined friendship and fun with a dose of education or philanthropy. Photo courtesy County of Inyo Eastern California Museum
All of which, said Museum Services Administrator Jon Klusmire, is ample reason to throw a birthday party.
This Saturday the public is invited to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Eastern California Museum in Independence. The museum and the Friends of the ECM will host a fundraising birthday celebration from 4-8 p.m. (the museum will open at 10 a.m., its regular weekend hours) featuring a silent auction, a raffle, a birthday cake, wine tasting, live music and refreshments. A $10 donation is suggested for those who want to enjoy the festivities and contribute to the Friends of the Museum.
The silent auction will start at 4 p.m. and probably get wrapped up about 7 p.m., giving attendees ample time to bid on the dozens of gifts, gift certificates and other goodies donated by local businesses, Klusmire said.
The museum is located at 155 N. Grant St., in Independence, three blocks west of the historic county courthouse. For more information, call (760) 878-2625 or (760) 873-8583.
According to Klusmire, the party will also celebrate the spirit of the dozens of Inyo County residents who have put their passion for preserving local history to work for 80 years.
The May 7, 1943 Inyo Independent newspaper noted that the aforementioned “rapid changes” taking place in the valley in 1928 had become a concern to “a group of young men” who set out to preserve the area’s history, and whose first goal was to “collect the remains of Indian culture” in the Eastern Sierra. Leading the group was Frank Parcher, G.W. Dow and Charles Forbes. In short order, other concerned history buffs from Bishop, Lone Pine, Big Pine and Independence were recruited to the cause.
The next year, 1929, the group had secured a large space in the basement of the Inyo County Courthouse in Independence that held the artifacts and other objects and photos that residents had donated. Many of those artifacts and photos are still part of the collection of the Eastern California Museum.
In 1930, the informal group formally incorporated, with the following Board of Directors: Louise Parcher, Douglas Robinson, William Irwin, Jr., Frank M. Parcher (Curator), Bessie Best, G.W. Dow and Charles T. Forbes. Mrs. Parcher set out to craft a detailed set of guidelines that directed how the volunteer museum would be run, what would be considered for the collection and methods of cataloging and documenting the collection.
Frank Parcher served as the first volunteer curator, and at least one member of the Parcher family was intimately involved in the museum association until 1943. “Today, the family’s commitment to the region’s history remains a tangible part of the Eastern California Museum, thanks to the extensive Frank M. Parcher Memorial Research Library, which was donated to the museum,” Klusmire said.
With a large membership and a willing group of donors, theMuseum Association declared, rather loudly, in 1934 that the collection had grown too large for the space in the basement of the courthouse. The group wanted a separate museum building, and continued to ask for a museum building for many decades to come.
During the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, the Museum Association not only staffed the museum, but also had its members lead tours of the area, hosted lectures and educational programs and put on one of the valley’s most anticipated and well-attended annual fundraising dinners.
The 1960s saw some significant changes to the operation of the museum and the association.
First, in 1962, the county agreed to pay $6,000 for about 300 Paiute-Shoshone baskets from the collection of Rose Black of Big Pine. The collection was put in cases and put on display in the courthouse museum in about 1964. The baskets have remained one of the museum’s prized exhibits and represent one of the largest collections of Paiute-Shoshone-Panamint basketry in the country. The collection helped fulfill the founders’ wishes to preserve the region’s “Indian culture.”
Walter Dow, who was quite elderly at the time, pledged to pay for the long-awaited and much-needed museum building in 1966. Dow, along with his wife Maude, built and ran the Dow Villa Motel in Lone Pine, the Winnedumah Motel in Independence and Glacier Lodge, above Big Pine, in addition to running a ranch outside of Lone Pine and being instrumental in brining the herd of Tule elk to the Owens Valley.
According to Klusmire, construction moved quickly on the building located on a parcel of land leased from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power at the western edge of Independence. The building was completed in 1967, and formally dedicated in April 1968, exactly 40 years after the creation of the Eastern California Museum Association. By August 1968, the Association and Inyo County had come to an agreement that had the county take over the care and cost of operating the new building, but with the Association still playing a large role in running the facility.
In December of the same year, the yard outside the new building was almost filled up with donations of farm equipment, tractors, wagons, buggies, freight wagons and construction wagons and other equipment used on the Los Angeles Aqueduct. An assortment of large mining artifacts was also added to the collection.
About 20 years later, work started on a new museum wing and bookstore. In 1997, the county contributed $150,000 to the project, which was matched by more than $100,000 in donations, raised mostly through the Friends of the Eastern California Museum, the volunteer group that had assumed the role of the former Museum Association under a new name. In 1999, the new wing and bookstore was completed. Volunteers then built Pioneer Village, consisting of Western-style buildings on the museum grounds, and also installed the Mary DeDecker Native Plant Garden. The next improvement project headed up by the Friends of the Eastern California Museum is the Jane Bright Memorial Rock and Mineral Garden.
Klusmire noted that seems to be a lot of history, but said it only scratches the surface of the 80 years of dedication Inyo County residents and businesses have devoted to preserving their collective past.
“This Saturday’s birthday fete is an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of the labor of those who have laid the solid foundation for the preservation of the region’s history,” he said, “and celebrate the foresight and wisdom of that group of concerned young men who, 80 years ago, thought time was moving a bit too fast, and took steps to help the community keep the present in perspective by remembering and preserving the past.”
|
