The Jasper Museum

Curator's Log

What has gone up, what has been worked out, and when. Newest first.

Gold in Jasper Maps Documents Critter Cam Stories The Anthony Collection Uncategorized
Note

Gold in Jasper is coming in October

A new exhibit is being put together on the gold mining years, built around dozens of newspaper clippings running from the 1800s to recent times, with photographs of the workings and the men who ran them. The clippings still have to be scanned and dated, so the exhibit opens in October. Two things on the page are finished and live now. A chart of the gold price from 1792 to the present, which makes plain something easy to miss: every ounce ever taken out of this valley was sold at a price fixed by law, and it did not move for ninety nine years. And a running tally that adds up what the clippings claimed, as they are catalogued. What the mines actually recovered is not in the tally and will not be, because it was never published. Owners had every reason to keep it quiet, and some of the quiet was covering schemes that only worked while nobody could check. That silence is part of the record too, and the page says so rather than leaving a blank.

See the collection

Note

Everything in the museum now has an accession number

Every map, photograph, document and frame in the collection has been catalogued and given a number of its own, and most now have their own page you can link to or cite. This log is new, and so is the Friends list. The museum has a good deal more material waiting to be scanned, and from here you will be able to see what arrives and when.

Added

The Anthony Collection opened

The 1982 sales catalog, the property easements and the promotional film, all of it from Luke and Luella Anthony and obtained before their passing. It is an unusually complete record of how a mountain subdivision was actually sold.

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Added

A box of photographs and paper went under the camera

Twenty items photographed in one sitting, including the 1896 Jasper post office letter, the Miser Mine, and Walter Baker's account of his mines. Most are not identified yet and they are sitting in Uncategorized until they are.

See the collection

Note

The museum opened

Twenty five years of collecting, finally somewhere public. Maps, documents, the critter cam and the ghost cabin story to start with. Nothing here is behind a login and nothing is for sale.

Friends of the Jasper Museum

Get told when something new goes up

The museum grows in fits and starts, whenever a box turns up or something finally gets identified. Leave your name and the curator will write when there is something new worth seeing. No more than once a month, and usually less.

What are you interested in

Your address is used for one thing, which is telling you when new material goes up. It is never sold, never shared and never handed to a mailing company. The list is a plain file on this server and the curator is the only person who reads it. Every message has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and one click is the end of it.