Caribou Historical Society Museum plans for season; seeks members

The Caribou Historical Society (CHS) is planning to open its doors for the season from Memorial Day to Labor Day.  Right now, the plan is to open on Saturdays for visitors and to groups by appointment.  As the season goes on, the Society is hoping to be able to expand the number of days it is available to the public.  At present, the staff for the building is fairly limited.  Bill Horsley, Galen Wilson, and Jerry Stoor are the core of the Society’s administrative team, and have been working for years at this point to improve and expand the offerings at the building, which is the old Stoor’s Grocery store on 100 E. Hooper Ave, across from the Hooper School.

The building is perfectly located just around the corner from historic Main Street in Soda Springs, though Bill Horsley is quick to explain that the CHS is a county-wide organization, with documents, artifacts, items, clothing, and an amazing collection of material from areas all throughout the county. Among the building’s many fascinating treasures are materials from Soda Springs itself, but also from the farthest reaches of the county and beyond—from Wayan to Thatcher, and Fish Creek to Freedom.   If any part of the county is not yet represented, it undoubtedly will be before too long.  Like any preservation group, the goal of the society is to collect, preserve, curate, and allow access to the physical things that help serve as touchstones to the history of the area and its people.

In fact, the site of the museum itself is a testament to the local history of several generations of residents—from shoppers of the original store, all the way to the relatively recent classes of school kids who made their way across the street at lunchtime.  The building was purchased by John Stoor in the 1920s from Bill’s great great grandfather Herbert, who himself had clerked at the ZCMI on the location (built in 1882 to replace the original log building which burned down) until he purchased it in 1895.  When the society was gifted the building by the Stoor family, it was in rough shape, having been used for many purposes in the intervening years after Vern and Jenny Stoor retired in the early 80s, including a dollar store, medical store, craft store, and public TV studio and computer store.  It was not only a bit of a homecoming for Bill, but also for Jerry (who is the great grandson of John Stoor), and Galen (whose aunt lived in a small apartment at the back of the building at one time).

For all three men, it was a way to get in touch with their own past, as well as the history of the area.  The building is a treasure trove of memories, a collection of contact points to the long and storied past.  Over the course of an afternoon, Horsley described how many of the objects in the museum had been stored in attics, basements, barns, and other sometimes forgotten places until a move, or the passing of an owner, led the items to find their way to Horsley, Stoor, Wilson, and other volunteers, who are working on creating a place for everything that comes in.

The building is set up to evoke a sense of the original corner store, down to the penny candy at the front counter.  “We raised the price a little,” Horsley says, pointing to the jars of candy below with $.02 labels across their fronts.  

The counter at the front of the store is designed to appear similar to the way it had in the past, and the store area is filled with artifacts from across the last century and more, arranged as they come in into various themed displays.

A series of early photo portraits hang along the east wall of the main floor, featuring the images of many of the town founders, recovered from one of the previously mentioned attics.  Just up a ramp toward the back section of the building is a set of display cabinets, formerly housed in the Caribou Memorial Hospital, of medical equipment from various periods of the last
two centuries.  

Another room houses a collection of military items donated by local servicemembers, relatives, and others.  A worn but immaculate WWI uniform hangs across from a WWII machine gun, and within touching distance of a medals, documents, and physical indicia of service in the generations worth of wars and stateside waiting.  One especially poignant relic is a board discovered during a remodeling project, which reads “Built by Old Kal Jenne/ Dec 22, 1941/ United States at war with Japan, Italy, and Germany/ Kal, Jr. is in Manila”.  As the explanatory card above the item explains, young Kal died during the Bataan Death March, making it an irreplaceable and striking piece of lived history.  The card further instructs visitors to find a happier note from Old Kal elsewhere in this museum, and there are plenty of happy sights to behold.  In fact, Horsley works hard not to give up a secret that the museum plans to unveil as soon as it is ready.  A sneak peak makes it clear that it should put a lot of smiles on a lot of faces.

The main ground floor space is used by local groups for various gatherings and classes, and can be arranged for with any of the members of the board, pending availability.  The same is true of a fantastic solarium on the second floor, which is equipped with a functional kitchen and restroom.  Of course, the facilities aren’t fully up to year-round use (the plumbing is shut off during the winter, for instance) because there are still a number of things that need to be readied first.  The building needs a functional furnace (or two) to keep the pipes unfrozen in the winter.  The current model, according to Bill is “a second-hand, undersized, noisy, troublesome trailer house furnace that was probably designed to heat about four or five hundred square feet.”  There are places in the building where flooring needs to be replaced, and the electrical wiring needs to be upgraded.  The garage and outdoor areas need work, and so on.

Like history itself, it’s an unfolding story.  The Caribou Historical Society is funded in part by a small county budget, which allows them to “keep the lights on” as the expression goes.  But the projects that need to be completed will need additional resources.  The CHS is seeking annual members at a variety of contribution levels, from $25 and up to help achieve the goals they have in mind.  It is typical for historical societies to be supported by a strong base of members through annual dues, which are in some ways more critical than volunteering.  “Although we would love more volunteer participation,” Horsley suggests, “the extra funds would be huge.”

The CHS would also gratefully
accept the help of anyone with grant writing experience, or a sincere interest in taking it up.  There are many state, federal, and organizational grants that a museum of the CHS’s type might qualify for, but looking for them and writing them can be very time consuming.  “We would certainly welcome any help in that area,” Horsley says.  “But we want everyone to be a part of this,” Horsley says.  “Anything helps.”   Memberships can be acquired by visiting the museum in person and filling out a form and leaving an email address, or calling one of the names listed on the door: Bill Horsley (208-604-0524), Jerry Stoor (208-317-5148), Galen Wilson
(208-221-3181).