Museum Minute

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Museum Minute is heard Tuesdays & Thursdays 

in the 7:00AM news hour on Sheridan Media

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for a whole year of Museum Minutes. 

  101 S. Main Street is the site of Sheridan’s first hotel, the Grand Central. The grand opening of the original wood framed hotel was celebrated July 3, 1883. The current building was built in 1916 by Richard Keenan, president of a coal company in Dietz just north of Sheridan. Many of the buildings on Sheridan’s Main Street have names on them for either the business or the person who built the building.

Grand Central Hotel, Museum at the Bighorns,  2004.75.064   

 Do you know which southern Sheridan County town’s name was chosen by a lottery of railroad workers?  The name Ulm was chosen from a lottery, and a German railroad worker submitted the name of his hometown in Germany. The name Ulm loosely translated means ‘a wide spot in the road.’ Ulm, Wyoming began as a railroad town and was a thriving community through the 1900s to 1950s. 

Ulm Post Office, Museum at the Bighorns,  2011.002.010    

 Elsa Spear Edwards Byron was a professional photographer and historian known for documenting the history of Sheridan County. In the Museum at the Bighorns collection there is some of Elsa’s photographic equipment, such as her Argus film camera. Elsa grew up in Big Horn, Wyoming and had an active role in her family’s Spear-O-Wigwam Dude Ranch. This is where she began photographing and capturing the rugged landscapes and candid moments of Western life in our region. Her photos were frequently accompanied by detailed captions, reflecting her deep interest in the local history and stories of the region. 

Byron's Argus Film Camera, Museum at the Bighorns, 2004.39.008 

 Tepee Lodge is located in the Bighorn Mountains 22 miles northwest of Sheridan. From the mid 1900s to the 1970s, Tepee Ranch was a Dude Ranch. One of the many activities on the ranch was Dudes took all day pack trips to remote mountain lakes. "Wrangling at Tepee Ranch” photograph was taken near Tepee Lodge and is of Tepee Lodge Wranglers driving horses through wooden archway. The photo was taken by local photographer, Don Diers.  

"Wrangling at Tepee Ranch, Museum at the Bighorns, 2016,017.005

 Did you know what a tie-hack does for a job? People who felled the trees and cut the timber down to size were known as “tie hacks” and they worked on the Tongue River Tie Flume in 1883 to supply the railroad with railroad ties. The tie flume was in the northern part of Bighorn Mountains. Timber would travel down the longest V-shaped flume in the world, stretching about 36 miles from top to bottom. The trestles supporting it were as high as 70 feet in some places. In other places, iron bolts were used to anchor it to the granite cliffs.   

Tongue River Tie Flume, Museum at the Bighorns, 2003.76.019

 Bernard Thomas grew up in Sheridan and became a famous painter and mural artist. You can see one of Bernard’s murals on the Hospital Pharmacy building on Sheridan’s Main Street. The mural depicts the first general store J.H. Conrad and Co. The Museum at the Bighorns has one of Bernard’s early paintings of a mountain scene from 1937 when he graduated from Sheridan High School.  

 Thomas Painting, Museum at the Bighorns, 2021.014.002

 Do you know someone who worked at the Sheridan Woolworth Store in 1966? Help us identify some of the employees in the opening day of Woolworths photo. This black and white photo was taken by Don Diers, a local photographer. The employees are posed around the stairwell with its original chrome handrails. This photo was shared by community member, Linda Grosso as her memory of the Woolworth Retail Store for the current exhibit “History of 171 North Main Street.”  

To help identify the Woolworth employees in the photo, you can see the photo by stopping by the museum’s new location at 171 North Main Street to look at the photo in person. 

Can you imagine downtown Sheridan Main Street in 1888? The Museum at the Bighorns has a three-dimensional model representing Sheridan’s first three streets, Loucks, Brundage and Works. This three-dimensional model is also known as a diorama and was created by Tom Warneke in 2004. The diorama is part of the current exhibit “History of 171 North Main Street.” A mingling of residential and business wood structure buildings is seen up and down Sheridan’s Main Street in this 1888 representation.    

To see the diorama by stopping by the museum’s new location at 171 North Main Street to look at the photo in person.

From the mid 1900s to 1960s, the original site of Woolworth Company in Sheridan was 109 North Main Street, currently where The Best Out West store is located. in the early 1900s the store was known as F.W. Woolworth Co. 5 – 10 &15 cent store. By the early 1900s Woolworth chain stores populated the United States to become one of the largest retail chains in the world throughout the 20th century. Increased retail competition led to its decline and going out of business in the 1990s. Sheridan’s Woolworth Company was located at 171 North Main Street from 1966 to the late 1990s. 

You can see two photos of the locations of Sheridan’s Woolworth by stopping by the museum’s new location at 171 North Main Street to look at the photo in person. 

Woolworth at 171 N. Main St., Lupton Collection, 1971, Photos Courtesy of the Wyoming Room, Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library.   

Sheridan Main Street wasn’t always paved with cement and asphalt. At one point Sheridan’s Main Street’s cobble stone was wooden blocks. These 4 inches by 8 inches by 2-inch-deep rough wooden blocks paved the main street for pedestrians, horses and wagons to travel on. The most famous local photos of these wooden blocks are from the 1923 flood. Sheridan had one of the largest floods from the Big Goose and Little Goose Creeks. The photos after the flood show the wooden blocks washed away from their grid like pattern to a pile of them on one side of Main Street.  

Sheridan Flood of 1923, Museum at the Bighorns, 2003.058.028, 1923.

Do you have a memory of the Woolworth Retail Store? Museum at the Bighorns current exhibit “History of 171 North Main Street” not only highlights the two buildings and the businesses that once occupied them, but the museum is collecting community members memories of the Woolworth Retail Store that was there from 1966 to the 1990s. So far, the museum has collected a range of memories from Christmas shopping to shoplifting. And we can’t forget about all the cafe’ memories about eating grilled cheese to drinking malt shake. 

You can see the Woolworth Memories by stopping by the museum’s new location at 171 North Main Street to look at the photo in person.