Inside the front entrance of the Fairview Museum of History and Art there’s a cast of a full Columbian mammoth skeleton, which was excavated in the mountains nearby in 1988. Local fossils are impressive and make great centerpieces. But it’s ancient history. It won’t tell you much about the people who live in Sanpete County.
So when it comes to the newest collections, the museum launched its Bridging History Project to gather artifacts and oral histories from residents, past and present. They hope to paint a clearer picture of their history and to help newcomers connect to their surroundings.
The man behind it, Tim Bingham, has been working on the project since the start of the year. He said the idea came from people coming in and asking questions about the town’s past that he didn’t have an answer for.
“So I started finding gaps in history, and it basically started there that somebody needed to step up and start being able to put together a way to gather the missing gaps in Fairview history, in Sanpete County history.”
But it’s deeper than that too.
Without a clear picture of the culture and background of the people around you, Bingham said it’s hard to take pride in where you come from.
“We're trying to change minds. We're trying to change mindsets. It's not just a small town where nobody wants to live.”
In a stack of photos being digitized in his office, Bingham singled out one of a local band playing odd instruments, including one man playing a gas can with a stick in it.
“They would do dances, they would do events, they were in parades. They traveled quite a bit through Sanpete County. But those are the stories that are not really told because you don't see the pictures. The people that know this stuff are starting to die away.”
Museum volunteer Kathie Giles is a lifelong resident of Fairview. She has plenty of stories to share about old buildings all over town such as the elementary school, all the cafes and most of all the dance hall.
“On New Year's Eve, they'd have a dance and it had live bands set up in the band area there. And it was old-fashioned, and really, really good music so it was really fun.”
She said Fairview has changed a lot and it’s growing fast. At her church “this past summer, I think we've had about six families move in. One has eight children, one has seven. one has six, one has three.”
Giles wants these new residents to understand and connect to the place they’re from in the way she does having spent so much time here. She hopes expanding the museum’s collection will help people take pride in the land they’re walking on and work hard to shape a bright shared future for everyone living there.
