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May 28, 2003

HISTORY LESSONS

Beatty residents turn out for opening of museum addition

By RICHARD STEPHENS
PVT

RICHARD STEPHENS / PVT
Visitors check out the new addition to the Beatty Museum, which officially opened Sunday. At right, Erin Evans gives Claudia Reidhead a brick that Evans' mother had removed from Rhyolite. Evans drove all the way from Bishop, Calif., to turn it over to the museum.

BEATTY - The Beatty Museum and Historical Society officially opened the Beatty Museum's new addition with an open house Sunday. Members, guests, and casual visitors gathered to hear something of the museum's history and of its plans for the future from BMHS President Mary Revert. Reverend Jeff Taguchi offered a prayer that focused on the love shown by volunteers in building the addition and working to preserve the past and the lessons it has to teach.

The new addition, which gives the museum room to display many more artifacts in a more attractive manner, is the result of donations by many people. Les and Kay Parsons donated the building itself, with construction money coming from a grant from the Nye County Commission.

Others acknowledged for supplying materials, equipment, and labor were Brad Briggs, Jack Crowell, Richard Dunsterville, Bernie Ferch, Earnie Jenerou, John Lisle, John Lupac, Bill Marchand, Earl Seely, Dave Snider, Dave Spicer, the Stagecoach Hotel and Casino, Taguchi, and Vanderbilt Minerals.

Revert said that there were still some finishing touches to be put on the building, but that the museum already has plans for expansion, including the addition of a small amphitheater in the lower part of the lot and a research facility in the back.

The entire museum just received a new coat of paint in a drab green that is receiving mixed reviews from locals accustomed to the original redwood color of the main building, which was formerly the town's Catholic church.

Revert called the new color "bullfrog green" in honor of the Bullfrog Mining District, whose history the museum preserves.

As part of the renovation, crosses were removed from the building so that travelers would no longer assume that the museum was still a church. Many people, seeing the crosses, had mistakenly approached the museum seeking food or other assistance.

Coincidentally, the day of the open house was also a homecoming of sorts for one artifact that had been taken from Rhyolite by a tourist who was ignorant of federal law forbidding such removals.

Erin Evans, now a resident of Bishop, Calif., drove to Beatty to return the object, a distinctive brick from the Porter Brothers Store, that her mother had taken as a souvenir. Evans had become so attached to the brick, decorated with a floral design and the identifying Letters "P B," that she had become known as the Porter Lady in Venice Beach when she lived there. She said that returning the brick was an "act of absolution," and that she did not want her mother to be a felon.