Museum Year-End Report

The Oneida Pioneer Museum continues to rebound from the pandemic, hosting 100 visitors more than in 2021. The Museum opened on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend with its annual Bake Sale and closed on Labor Day. Shelia Williams Hawkins and Kristle Jensen worked as hostesses with most Board members each working at least one day during the summer.

The Museum had 743 visitors sign the guest register. Because only one member of a group or family usually signs the guest register, the Museum likely hosted close to 900 visitors. Some visitors do not indicate their city or state when they sign in. Most visitors from out of town came to the Museum because they saw the signs on the freeway.

During the Malad Valley Welsh Festival, nearly 170 visitors toured the Museum. Memorial Day weekend brought over 70 visitors to the Museum to see new exhibits and to buy goodies at the bake sale. In addition, the 3rd grade classes of Malad Elementary School toured the Museum in May, and a Young Women’s group toured in August. The local camp of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers holds its monthly meetings at the Museum except during the summer.

As shown on the following table, visitors from Malad and Oneida County accounted for 231 of the visitors who signed in. Nearly 120 visitors came from other places in Idaho. The rest of the visitors came from 24 states (not including Idaho) with nearly 260 coming from Utah. For the first time since the pandemic, the Museum hosted visitors from other countries (New Zealand and Peru).

The following table indicates the number of visitors during the months when the Museum was officially open in 2022, compared to past years:

Other visitors made appointments to tour the Museum during the months when it is closed.

A favorite activity at the Museum this year was a Seek-and-Find game created by Hailey Sweeten. Kids could take a page of pictures of items in the Museum and find them, receiving a piece of candy as a reward.

The window display committee of Dotty Evanson, Sharon Harris, Janice Vaughan, Hailey Sweeten and Liz Kent created the summer exhibit that featured “Quilting, Mining, and Music in Wales.” The Welsh quilt created by the Quilters Guild and a large Welsh flag provided the backdrop for the window displays.

The smaller display window featured Samaria’s legend of The Mine with the Iron Door, including a “skeleton,” a bank vault door, and “gold.” Visitors could read about the legend and consider going to search for the gold in the cave that has never been found since Glispy Waldron originally discovered it.

The seventh annual “Friends of the Museum” campaign had another successful year with 92 supporters of the Museum donating money to assist the Museum in its efforts to preserve the history of Malad and Oneida County. The names of the donors at each level (Annual, Handcart, Covered Wagon and Stagecoach) are on a plaque in the Museum. Because of some very generous donations, another level was added: Steam Engine.

The Museum receives annual allocations from Malad City and Oneida County that allow the Museum to hire hostesses and to pay for operation of the HVAC system.

Funded by grants from the Idaho Heritage Trust and the Rocky Mountain Power Foundation, the fabric preservation project was completed.

May 61 139 145 129 94 92 41 124 145 June 294 252 215 166 318 279 59 143 259 July 211 268 208 160 215 161 133 173 172 August 90 195 160 175 133 135 86 88 91 September 87 33 67 38 6 16 25 79 25

JoAnn Peters, an instructor at BYU-Idaho who teaches the history of fabrics and who has worked on clothing preservation projects in museums in Butte, Montana, and Idaho Falls, Idaho, spent nine weekends in Malad, repairing, tagging and preparing for archival storage over 200 items of clothing plus shoes, purses and hats. She also prepared the Museum’s collection of quilts for safe storage. Now those fabric collections can be easily rotated for displays throughout the Museum. Brianne MacDougal, granddaughter of Norm Jaussi, worked with JoAnn as an intern as part of her academic program at BYU-Idaho. Sarah Robbins has taken over the final part of the project that requires the sewing of dust covers for the last 40 items of clothing in preparation for storage in a room on the third floor of the Museum. Sarah is collaborating with Lucie Thomas Washburn in making the dust covers.

Besides preparing a clean storage room for the clothing collection on the third floor, J.D. Thomas installed large bolts and plates on the top floor to earthquake-proof the building. J.D. was surprised to find that some rudimentary earthquake damage prevention was done on this building that dates back to 1914.

A side benefit of the fabric preservation project was the identification of several furs in the collection. Besides identifying fur coats, cloaks and collars, local taxidermist Sid Lewis worked with his

Visitors to Museum

TOTAL 743 Malad/Oneida County 231 Idaho 118 Utah 258 Nevada 14 California 12 Arizona 11 Washington 10 Florida 6 Texas 5 CO, VA, PA, 4 GA, MO, MS, AL 3 NY, MT, WY, MD 2 NJ, IN, WI, OK, SC, IL 1 New Zealand 1 Peru 1 Unknown 66

brother Bill to take down the giant Kodiak bear skin that has hung on the wall since Ralph Hadfield’s widow donated it to the Museum, blow all the dust out of it, and rehang it more securely. A favorite of every child who comes to the Museum, the bear skin was found to be free of invasive insects and is now ready to entertain visitors who want to compare this bear to Old Ephraim, the giant grizzly bear killed by Malad native Frank Clark in Logan Canyon.

A grant was recently received from the Idaho State Historical Society so that archiving and cataloging the Museum’s extensive collection of books, newspapers and miscellaneous papers can begin.

The Museum Board meets at least quarterly to discuss maintenance, operations and ways to improve the Museum. Board members are Chair Jean Thomas, Vice-Chair Bill Lewis, Secretary Janice Vaughan, Treasurer Julie Willie, Lloyd Bush, D. L. Evans, Dotty Evanson, Sharon Harris, Joan Hawkins, Marvin Hess, Monte John, Liz Kent, Lorna Perry, Sarah Robbins, Hailey Sweeten and Larry Thomas.

Donations to the Museum of artifacts important to the history of Malad Valley and Oneida County are always welcome. Those wishing to donate an item to the Museum may contact any Board member. Donors will be asked to sign a Memorandum of Ownership to transfer permanent ownership to the Museum. All donations must be identified as to owner, use and relationship to Oneida County.

Farm Vehicles on the Road—Stay Alert

By Allison Eliason

Anyone watching the news over the last few weeks, will have seen several stories of roadway accidents involving farm equipment. It’s that harvest time of year when farms around the state are bringing in this season’s hard earned crops. Trucks bring various grains, beets and potatoes from the field to the farm or from the farm to the processing plant, the mill, bins or cellars to be stored. Other farm equipment like tractors and combines are frequenting the roads more these days as they move between the various fields ready for harvest. While they may seem like just one more vehicle on the road, drivers should take extra consideration as they share the roadways with farm equipment.

Most accidents involving farm equipment happen when other drivers become too impatient with slow moving vehicles. It’s true, it can be a real inconvenience to get stuck behind a slow moving tractor but they are going slow for a reason. That reason is they are trying to be safe.

By nature, farm equipment is heavy. Whether it is a big green tractor, a truck full of spuds or a semi filled with grain, they are just heavy and as a result, you will find them moving slower as they go along the road, here’s why.

The first and most simple reason that farm equipment moves slowly down the roadway is because they aren’t designed to move quickly, they are designed to move powerfully. What I mean is that their big engines are designed to produce a lot of torque or power to pull and work the implements they use. Their high torque and low gears mean that most tractors max out anywhere from 15 mph to 40 mph.

The need for heavy farm equipment to move slowly down the roadway is largely due to physics. Not to get too nerdy, but understanding some of those laws of nature will help us understand why it's important to slow things down. First, let’s talk about Isaac Newton’s first law of motion- objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. The heavier the object, say a truck hauling beets, the greater the force it will take to change its motion, or in this case, stop it. If that heavy truck is going slower, it will need less force, less time and less distance to come to a safe stop.

That heavy vehicle is going slow for another reason and that is to avoid tipping over, especially on turns. Physics and its laws of centrifugal force and inertia teach us that there are three main factors that contribute to overturned equipment- the equipment’s center of gravity, its load stability and its speed. The heavier the equipment, the higher the center of gravity which increases the chances of tipping. The greater the instability the more the weight shifts and throws off that center of gravity, again, increasing the chance of tipping. Both of these factors are hard to control, but speed is something completely in control of the driver. So farmers slow down to take those turns safely.

You don’t always have to suffer going behind a slow vehicle. When the time is right, it’s totally cool to pass that slow moving combine but there are some things to keep in mind as you do so. Some equipment is extra wide and hanging into the other lane. It’s important to wait to pass until the driver knows you are there and can scoot over for both your

Accidents involving farm vehicles are common, but easily preventable

sakes.

Pay attention to when trucks and equipment are turning off of the road to be sure you aren’t passing them at just the wrong time. Most farm equipment will need to make wide turns regardless of what way they are turning and if you go to pass them, just as they are swinging across you are mixing up a recipe for disaster. No matter what sort of rush you are in, its better to just wait for the other vehicle to turn off the road.

Finally, don’t pass if conditions aren’t safe to do so. If it is dusty and difficult for drivers to see you or for you to see any oncoming traffic, it is safer to wait than to risk it. Additionally, wait to pass until you are in a legal passing zone. When given the chance, most tractor operators will pull over to let traffic pass.

There may be times you want to avoid getting stuck behind that slow moving truck and you think you can quickly get out ahead of it, but that line of thinking comes with its own risks as well. Remember that a loaded down truck will take much longer to slow down than a normal vehicle. If you pull out and aren’t going fast enough, there is a real possibility that the truck is going to rear end you or drive off the road to avoid hitting you. In a car vs tractor or loaded truck crash, the car will always lose.

It's important to realize that everyone has a part to play in farm safety, even if you never step foot on a farm. Idaho is a proud ag producing state, leading the country in some of its prized crops. We can all take part to make it a safe harvest if we patiently share the road with those vehicles that make it possible to bring harvest in and food to all our families. The harvest season may be coming to a close soon, but now is no time to put the rush on things.