Museum-goers learn skills of bygone era

By Jeff Pope

Saturday, May 23, 2009 | 6:02 p.m.

Visitors to the Clark County Museum took a stroll down memory lane Saturday, or as it’s known at the museum, Heritage Street.

As part of Clark County’s Centennial Celebration, the museum was open for free Saturday and offered demonstrations of chores and hobbies that haven’t been seen in decades but were once part of every day life.

Volunteers showed visitors how to churn butter, braid horse-hair ropes and scrub laundry on a washboard.

The intent of the day’s festivities was to show the human side of history, Museum Administrator Mark Hall-Patton said.

“When trying to talk about history, we often lose sight of the history of life,” he said. “It’s important to talk about who did what, but a lot of it is how did people live?”

The museum, 1830 S. Boulder Highway in Henderson, featured a new exhibit showing Clark County as a destination spot for railroads, mining companies, recreationists, the federal government and tourists for 100 years.

The day was a personal stroll for Las Vegas resident Evelyn Anderson. In the Goumond house on Heritage Street, designed to resemble a typical late 1950s home, Anderson said a television looked like the one she watched at her aunt’s house when she was a little girl.

“I used to sit and watch ‘I Love Lucy.’ My brother wanted to watch ‘Gunsmoke’ and if we ever argued over what to watch, she (her aunt) would turn it off and make us do chores,” Anderson said.

Museum officials estimated about 1,000 people attended the day’s activities.

Sisters Jill Halverson and Linda Heckendorf demonstrated tatting lace, thread and yarn.

Tatting is not a skill for the impatient. Heckendorf said she spent between 40 and 60 hours making a bookmark and worked on a sheet edging off and on for two years.

But it’s a good way to pass the time waiting in a line, she said.

“When I find myself at the DMV… or the dentist or the doctor, I pull out my tatting and let the time go,” she said.

Boulder City resident Norman “Gus” Gardiner made his living as a carpenter. In the last two years of his life, he built a model railroad crafting every building and small detail down to the fruit sold outside the general store.

His widow donated the display to the museum, which was dedicated Saturday in the museum’s 1931 Union Pacific Boulder City Depot.

Clark County officially formed on July 1, 1909 from the southern half of Lincoln County and is named for railroad baron William Andrews Clark.

Events celebrating the county’s centennial are planned throughout the year including an exhibit of the history of the Strip on July 1 in the County Government Center, 500 Grand Central Parkway, roundtable history discussions each month and the dedication of the Candlelight Wedding Chapel on Nov. 14 at the museum.