History Colorado Center

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​WHAT:  RMGA MEMBERSHIP MEETING – HISTORY COLORADO CENTER

WHEN:  February 12, 2018, 6:30 pm – Networking, 7:00 pm – Short Meeting, 7:15 pm – History and tour of the History Colorado Center.

WHERE:  1200 Broadway, Denver, CO 80203

PROGRAM:  Executive Director Steve Turner will provide the history and a tour of the History Colorado Center.​

RMGA Membership Meeting Review 

History Colorado Center

 
Entry before 6:30 pm.  NO food or drinks from outside can be brought in.

Short business meeting:

• March meeting will be in Golden at the Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum.
  
• Mike Pearl commented on how members can recognize “phishing” expeditions from odd emails.  One making the rounds over the past few weeks. 
  

 Guests and possible new members were introduced:

• A new company “Denver Like a Local” – both owners attended.  They are also new members of Visit Denver and they offer three tours: LoDo, Hidden Denver (includes the Navarre) and a food tour.
• Michael – Education Coordinator at the Byers/Evans was also a guest
  
• Teresa, retired airlines, attended IGA Tour Manager cruise class in 2011
  
• Zelick International Association – gives tours of Japan to visitors and tours of US to Japanese visitors. She may join RMGA.
  

Program Chair, Dawn Nelsen, introduced Jason Hanson, Chief Creative Officer & Director of Interpretation and Research for History Colorado.  Jason has been with History Colorado full-time for two years.  He was with CU Boulder as research faculty and worked with the current state historian, Patty Limerick.  His focus there was on oil shale, fracing, and water.  He came to History Colorado as Patty’s envoy and stayed. 

History Colorado has had many changes over the past two years:

• New Board of Directors
• New Executive Director
  
• New Chief Creative Officer & Director of Interpretation and Research – who oversees exhibits and collections
  
• There is a staff of 100 throughout all the museums in the state (Emily Dobish is the volunteer coordinator)
  

                There are more than 100 volunteers
                Greeters
                People who are long-time volunteer who work with the curator
                Bus groups – should talk to Group Sales – Shania
                         She will ask about numbers, dates, timing – general information
                         Guides (step-on like RMGA) can comment on what the guests are seeing
                         The collection belongs to the state so we are essentially all employees of the state.
                        Motorcoach parking: between 11th and 12th on Acoma – the parking meters have been removed and school                                  buses park there
                        Also, Café Rendezvous has a new chef and a kid’s menu – no “family” menus.  Expect the café to expand in                                    the next 2-3 years with lunch space for school kids. 

History Colorado focuses on three sections:

• Historic preservation
• Archeology
  
• History Colorado Center Museum and the eight community museums throughout the state and the Georgetown Railroad
  
• History Colorado’s archives include more than 15 million artifacts:
  

                         13 million are documents
                         2 million are photos
                         200-250 thousand are 3D artifacts
                         Many are stored on-site and there is an off-site location for most of the items. 

When History Colorado Center (HC) reopened the focus was to attract families and kids.  Now that focus has changed to include all generations.

HC remodeled the Montrose, Colorado museum and a version of that new exhibit will be in HC Denver in the fall. 
 

Jason’s commented that traveling exhibits don’t work well in museums because museums tend to be locality specific.

History Colorado is developing exhibits in-house and is working to appeal to a much broader audience which will show:

• Timeline of Colorado’s history
• Showing the relationship between events in Colorado
  
• Doing more exhibits such as Zoom In (this exhibit took 14 months to prepare). 
  
• Developing flexible space for more contemporary history
  
• Byers-Evans House Museum is being redeveloped as Women’s History Museum
  
• Refreshing Fort Vasquez and re-interpreting their exhibits with more focus on the fort itself. 
  
• Pueblo will have a Colorado borderlands exhibit of southern Colorado
  

                        This will open in three sections: Pueblo, Trinidad and Fort Garland
                        The actual Treaty of Guadalupe in the Mexican War when Colorado was part of Mexico will be on display

1. A new exhibit opening on the Rockies baseball home opener on April 7th called “Play Ball – Celebration of America’s Game” will have the baseball collection of a local baseball fan.  This collection is reported to be second only to the Baseball Hall of Fame collection in Cooperstown, New York.  This exhibit will stay open as long as the Rockies are playing baseball this year (i.e., if they make the playoffs or the World Series).  About 10% of the collection is at HC now.  A bit of trivia – the first baseball game played in Denver was in 1862!

       Some of the items to be displayed include:

• Bats – owned by Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and others

       These bats were sent back to Louisville Slugger to be used as a template to make additional bats for each of these players

• Lou Gehrig’s 1936 MVP award – a watch
  
• A comic book featuring Jackie Robinson
  
• Uniform shirts worn by Joe DiMaggio and Sandy Koufax
  
• Ball glove belonging to Willie Mays
  
• Baseball autographed by Don Drysdale
  

   2. Legorado – “create your state” will allow the public to have the opportunity to build Legos to create a version of Colorado

   3. Several of the items for the upcoming exhibits are not yet on the website. 

2019’s exhibits will include “Building Denver” (the new Executive Director is an architect) and will feature

• ‘60s City Beautiful – (Mayor Robert Speer started this in the early 1900s)
• ‘80s Imagine a Great City (Federico Pena’s era)
  
• Beer Here – Colorado’s hoppy history (many, many craft breweries in Colorado)
  
• Horse Power
  
•      Spanish
  
•      Indian
  
•      Cowboys
  
•      Current
  
• Smithsonian Exhibit on American Democracy
  
•      Development of American Democracy
  
•      The Smithsonian is also sending artifacts with the exhibit
  
•      Colorado led the country in women’s suffrage (1893)
  

We then visited some of the storage vaults – humidity and temperature controlled to preserve the artifacts – where we saw Baby Doe Tabor’s bed frame which had been on display for 30 years.  They also have her wedding dress and the pajamas she died in.  The dresser is on display currently in the “Zoom In” exhibit – more on this later.  William Randolph Hearst bought the bed, dresser and vanity and HC found it for sale in an antique store in New Orleans.  We also saw the Play Ball” exhibit items listed above. 

Then on to Zoom In – the Centennial State in 100 objects - This tour took 14 months to prepare and sponsored by Colorado State University (CSU).  The gallery itself was sponsored by a grant from the Boettcher Foundation.  This exhibit is a “core” long-term exhibit and Jason expects these items to be on display for at least six years.  There is no Sand Creek information here at this time – there will be a special exhibit coming later.  Also, there is no KKK artifact in this exhibit. 

• Only 10 of the items are on loan, the other 90 are owned by HC
  
• Starting with an arrowhead found in an animal that lived in Colorado over 13,000 years ago. 
  
• Then the Mesa Verde artifacts
  
•      There was a consistent community at Mesa Verde for about 600-800 years
  
•      There are also sandals from Mesa Verde
  
• Spanish coins
  
• Various Native American tribes lived here at various times, including:
  
•      Apache
  
•      Comanche
  
•      Utes once were in all of Colorado
  
• Next was an 1820’s beaver hat
  
• Then a bison pelt coat – great in winter, not so great in wet weather
  
• Glorieta Pass battle flag – this flag arrived in the 1890s and was in storage for more than 30 years
  
• Kit Carson’s leather coat
  
• Gold square w/Otto Mears name stamped on it
  
• Developing towns after the Gold Rush, “riding shotgun” – the guy on the right of the stage coach driver carried a gun
  
• 1864 printing press handle found in the muck in the river
  
• Land grant papers
  
• Espinosa Brothers in 1863 killed 32 people – first mass murderer in Colorado history
  
• He was beheaded and the heads sent to Governor Evans to prove the death and claim the bounty
  
• Colorado Constitution – which was originally published in three languages:
  
•      Spanish
  
•      English
  
•      German
  
• Lakota warriors
  
• Chief Ouray’s desk with one of his calling cards
  
• Baby Doe’s dresser
  
• Bicycle / ballot box from 1893 – women in Colorado votes
  
• Car license plate from 1902-1903 - #2
  
• Margaret Tobin Brown’s opera cape (The Unsinkable Molly Brown)
  
• Outdoor Christmas lights – Sturgeon Electric – 1936-38
  
• Leroy Smith’s Shriner’s Cap – brought jazz to Denver in the 1940s
  
•      Leroy was a 32nd degree Mason in the Shriners
  
• Arapahoe High School jacket with Arapahoe Indian on the back – the high school worked with the tribe to be accurate
  
• Dwight David Eisenhower’s WWII battle jacket
  
• 10th Mountain Division soldier’s outdoor uniform
  
• Chair from the chair lift #1 in Aspen  -$3.75/day
  
• Scrap from the first airplane bombing – 1955 – guy loaded his mother’s suitcase with explosives – killed 44 people, including his mother
  
• Rocky Flats – plutonium
  
• Air Force Academy graduation uniform cap
  
• Many federal offices here – people were attracted by the availability of mountain activities
  
•      Skiing
  
•      Hiking
  
•      Biking
  
• One of John Denver’s guitars
  
• Handles from 1986 Wynkoop Brewery
  
• 1976 – Denver rejected the Olympics
  
• To honor the Asian population -  Chin Lin Su’s wedding dress – the family was prominent in Denver’s Chinese population
  
• Crocs – they are pink and match Chin Lin Su’s wedding dress
  
• Ute shawl – the Utes had the highest number of their tribe serving in the military
  

 
In the future there will be ongoing diversification of this exhibit:

• Ralph Carr – Governor of Colorado during the Japanese/American internment during WWII
• Items honoring our large Vietnamese population
  
• Items honoring our large urban Native American population
  
• Columbine Massacre
  

In closing, Jason asked what HC might have missed, what do you think will be important to Colorado history in the future?  

Written by Nancy Brueggeman CEO