There’s something for everyone at the Fairview Museum of History & Art, an hour and a half scenic drive from Salt Lake City. Artists and art lovers can spend hours contemplating the excellent collection of paintings and sculptures, primarily by Utah artists. Scientists and physicians can marvel at old electric shock machinery and the wooden prosthetic leg. Geologists can examine the collections of rocks found in Utah’s terrain, while agriculturalists can wander the grounds checking out the early thresher and sulky plow. If you’re into fabrics and fabric art, the extensive lace collection will draw you in, as will the quilts. Members of the LDS Church can see an entire room devoted to sculptures, photos and paintings related to their religion. Law enforcement buffs might recognize the ball and chain, or see an early breathalyzer device. And for children the Museum is a fascinating world where you can play with the old telephone system and operator’s board, look at lots of dolls, see the wonderful miniature houses and a scene from Cinderella, stare up at the enormous Columbian Mammoth |1| unearthed 18miles east in 1988, and learn a little bit about how people lived long before they were born. History buffs, of course , will be delighted by it all – an old dentists’ office, an early kitchen,|2| photographs of earlier years in the small towns of Utah.

The Fairview Museum is a private non-profit organization housed in two buildings maintained and operated by local volunteers, and funded by donations and grants. The Museum’s first building was originally a schoolhouse. When it was given to the city by the school district, Avard Fairbanks leased it as a studio for about a year. Lyndon Graham, who made the miniatures in the schoolhouse, and Golden Sanderson, the dynamo of the pair, were the only bidders on the schoolhouse when the city later put it up for auction. Winning bid: $20. Graham and Sanderson began displaying their own collected items, and soon let it be known that they’d be glad to accept things from anyone in the valley.

Twenty-two years later, when the Mammoth was discovered, a new building was built next to the schoolhouse. Designed specifically to accommodate the huge beast that now towers over visitors in the atrium, the building also houses a substantial collection of artworks by famous and lesser-known artists from Utah and elsewhere. Upstairs there are several statues by nationally renowned Avard Fairbanks,|4| and many paintings and sculptures by names such as LeConte Stewart, Ted Wassmer, Francis and Frank Zimbeaux, Bevan Chipman, Susan Gallacher, Kaziah Hancock and Lee Bennion. Upon their deaths, Wassmer, Francis Zimbeaux, and Bevan Chipman saw fit to donate parts of their own collections of other artists to the Museum. Bonus art pieces can be seen in the school house, where the built-in blackboards |5| have been preserved and contain colored chalk works by one of the teachers of earlier days.

The older building’s entrance has beautifully worn and smoothed stone steps, fashioned by thousands of schoolchildren’s feet during its previous life. Inside ,the two floors accommodate artifacts that provide insight into the history and culture of Fairview’s pioneers. A bowl of homemade soaps in one of the rooms is still in perfect shape due to the care taken, over 40 years, by Abbie Clement Taylor, a Fairview resident. One room displays a bedroom arrangement with a massive wooden bed made up with crocheted bedspread and bolsters. Another room contains a collection of children’s toys – a series of doll-carriages surrounds a very old round table. In the upstairs hallway an early telephone system allows you to use the rotary dial on one phone and watch the mechanics relay the signal to another phone, which will ring at the other end. Other rooms contain musical instruments, LDS-based artifacts, a pink alabaster model of the Taj Mahal, spinning wheels and looms, and even a silk dress reputed to have belonged to one of Brigham Young’s wives.|8| Much effort has gone in to preserving this old building. A fire destroyed much of it in the past, and subsequent repairs to the roof were not in accord with the building’s age and style, so eventually it was rebuilt in a more fitting historical fashion. Volunteers moved all the artifacts, large and small, to safe storage while this endeavor was accomplished.

For the past 22 years the principal responsibility for assuring the preservation of and access to innumerable treasures has been on the shoulders of one man, Ron Staker,|9| a Native Utahn and resident of nearby Mt. Pleasant. His staff is all volunteer-based. They undertook the daunting task of cataloging every item, and have just about finished that process today. During lulls in Museum traffic they raise funds by selling their hand-crafted quilts under the Mammoth’s watchful eye in the atrium of the newer building.

Exactly how to define the museum and its contents is something that comes up frequently, Staker remarks. Visitors, everyday citizens and professional museum experts alike, have provided much input over the years. There’s a push-pull dynamic going on in terms of progress and status quo. Staker recognizes and emphasizes the value of promoting and preserving the arts of Utah, and the investment that it takes in time and money and modern equipment, but then again, the “homespun” atmosphere of the old school house deftly enhances one’s insight into the lives and times and values of the people who have lived and still live in the area. Spring City, a neighboring town to Fairview, is on the nation’s national historic register. Fairview, Mt. Pleasant, and Spring City all have a nostalgic and charming ambience that is too often lost in our modern world.

Whatever your take is on how the museum ‘should’ be, you will not be disappointed in what you see and learn by visiting. It is worth the trip, and there are some events coming up in that neck of the woods that will double your pleasure. Spring City’s Heritage Days happen this May, and in July the Fairview Museum hosts their twentieth annual Fairview Lace Day with displays, classes, and demonstrations.

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UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.