Allow me to put the move of the Colorado History Museum into perspective.
The institution is 130 years old. It has occupied its current location along 13th Avenue and Broadway since 1977.
Nearly everything in the collection has been donated.
Only about 5 percent is exhibited at a time.
Much of the rest is stored in-house. In boxes and cabinets and drawers. Rolled into tubes, nestled in lined boxes, slid into plastic bags, placed on shelves. Microfilmed, digitalized, inventoried, cataloged.
The books and manuscripts collection includes: 22,000 books, 30,000 drawings, 3,750 maps; more than 25,000 microfilm reels, 1,200 sound recordings and oral histories; about 8.5 million pieces of paper, including letters and diaries, which make up a manuscript collection of 3,000.
On the materials side of the house are roughly 250,000 objects, many of which have multiple associated pieces. Start with: 8,500 archeological artifacts; 3,500 women’s garments; 1,500 men’s garments; 2,000 toys, dolls and games; more than 100,000 glass photo negatives; 800 paintings; more than 1,400 rolled textiles; more than 3,000 pieces of dinner china/glass.
It includes one Apollo 13 flight suit once worn by astronaut Jack Swigert; one pair of fancy embroidered pajamas worn by Horace Tabor; one pair of not-so-fancy red wool long johns belonging to his widow, Baby Doe, worn perhaps after her fortunes turned. It includes a Lakota beaded child’s vest, a gondola and a man carved of wood with white marbles for eyes. It includes saddles, pottery, keys, mining equipment, 1,000-year-old stone tools.
All of it must be moved to a warehouse, carefully and soon. The building is to be demolished in May.
“You have to see this,” collections move assistant Lisa Rowan says to Todd Topper, the director of collections management. Topper is overseeing the collections move — about 40 volunteers and 30 temporary staff members who are building custom-sized boxes, packing objects, assisting with inventory logging. We follow Rowan, and she shows us a cap made of deer skin and a single moccasin. “The card says (the moccasin is) made of a rodent turned inside out,” she says.
Curatorial assistant James Peterson has his own find, a Civil War flagstaff borne by the 1st Regiment of Colorado volunteers.
“Stumbling across a piece of history you didn’t know was represented in our collection is like discovering treasure,” Peterson tells me later. “It’s thrilling. You want to go tell everyone about it. It’s a direct connection to the past, and it brings the past to life.”
The museum has so many objects, collected over so many years, it’s impossible for everyone to have seen it all, Topper says. At any other time, they would luxuriate in the finds. But right now, they have to figure out how to pack a century-old Cochiti Pueblo pottery figurine — 21 1/2 inches high and 11 inches wide — so that it’s well protected on its journey to the warehouse. It will wait there at least two years before being moved again to the museum’s new home on 12th Avenue between Lincoln and Broadway.
About 45 percent of the collection has been relocated to the warehouse. Staff and volunteers have discovered at least 500 items once believed to have been lost. Peterson just found a decorative curtain panel from Abraham Lincoln’s funeral car. They’ve also discovered 4,000 items they cannot quickly match with records. That will be a later, vital project. “We are all about telling stories,” Topper says, “and we can’t tell the story of an object unless we know the history, the family, the manufacturer, where it came from.”
If you want a sense of what story means, of why this move is not just about packing, but guardianship, talk to Keith Schrum, curator of books and manuscripts. He will show you letters and diaries written in elegant cursive. He will read, in hushed tones, the words of Colorado Springs founder William Jackson Palmer written in 1861: “Having thought the matter over very fully, and counted as I believe the cost, I have come to the conclusion, 1st, that if the North is beaten in the war, it will be a disgrace to be an American citizen thereafter . . .”
On Thursday, workers opened the granite vault holding a time capsule planted during Gov. Dick Lamm’s administration. The vault was moved to its current location in the mid-1990s. The capsule itself will not be opened until July 4, 2075, but resting on top of the metal box was a bag of coins and, in another bag, an Easy Rider magazine. The note within read: “Nov. 2, 1994. Moved this time capsule to its present location after being twice hit by cars. Maybe it looks like a motorcycle. Clayton Bott Marble Mason & Stone Mason.”
I tracked down Bott. He was delighted to learn his magazine will be relocated with the capsule. Both will be displayed one day, part of Colorado’s ongoing story.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
