STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

It was three years in the making and shows two centuries of life in the Wood River Valley.

And, now, Ralph Harris’ mural depicting life in the Sun Valley area from the time members of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes fished from the banks of the Big Wood River to the emergence of Sun Valley as a world-class ski and mountain biking resort can be seen by all.

Three years after Harris began formulating the images in his mind, Abel Hurtado and four others drilled the panels that Harris painted onto the south-facing wall of Zions Bank in Ketchum.

Carlos Cortez prepares to hand off a panel as Cielo Robles looks on.

The 8-by-30-foot mural was installed just in time for Wagons Days Weekend.

“He did a lot of research—boy, did he work a long time on that Indian,” said Robert Gardner, a Silver Creek ranch owner who came up with the idea for the mural. “I am so glad to see it up.”

Gardner’s familial roots in the Wood River Valley go back to the 1890s when his great-grandfather from Milwaukee, Wis., opened a cigar store on Hailey’s Main Street. His family donated the cabin that housed the first Gold Mine Thrift Store and Community Library on the corner where Bavarian Soul now sits. And his forebearers went to school in Gannett and Silver Creek on horse-drawn wagon.

He’s proud of the place he lives and, when he saw a “Greetings from Chicago” mural while visiting the Windy City, he nabbed Harris, a classmate of his from first grade through high school, to paint it.

Robert and Kathryn Gardner watch the mural’s assembly in the absence of artist Ralph Harris, who had to go to Boise.

“Chicago visitors stop and have their pictures taken in front of the Chicago mural, and I think they’ll do the same with this,” he said.

Harris, whose grandfather came from Iowa in 1881 to work in the Wood River silver mines, has long made a living chronicling the history of Wood River Valley through art on the walls of the Blaine County Historical Museum, the Hailey Armory, commemorative posters and even one of Sun Valley Resort’s gondola cars.

The former ski instructor has spent the past 21 months, save for powder days at the ski resort, driving from his home in Hulen Meadows to Gardner’s heated barn on Loving Creek to paint the scenes. Originally, he had planned to have the mural done in time to install it in April; then he decided he needed to add a picture of Ruud Mountain’s early chairlift.

It was just as well as road construction closed Main Street for months and the dust from construction might have sullied the artwork.

Francisco Torres drills a concrete panel, otherwise known as a hardy board, into the wall.

This week, after applying several coats of varnish to the mural, Gardner and Harris handed its panels off to Francisco Torres, who trucked the panels 30 miles up the highway to Ketchum. There, they began assembling it on the bank’s wall.

Cielo Robles handed screws off to Torres and leaned her body weight against each panel to make sure they were flat as Hurtado screwed them in.

Marco and Carlos Cortez, along with Abel Hurtado, did the heavy lifting, battling a brisk wind to get the quarter-inch thick concrete panels from car to bank. There, they helped get the panels precisely in place so that the canvas top on one panel depicting Ketchum’s tall skinny ore wagons matched the canvas top on the other panel.

At one point, they realized they had an inch-wide gap between the 3-by-5-foot hardy boards panels they had started with on the right side and the panels they later hung on the left side. And, so, they had to move the panels they had installed earlier and reinstall them.

The mural provides a bright contrast to the muted colors of Zions Bank.

Finally, the colorful mural was in place.

There’s a proud Native American with an eagle feather performing a pow wow dance, two Chinese men on a railroad cart and the Challenger 951, which was the last train to chug through the valley before Sun Valley’s railroad era ended.

Ernest Hemingway and his son Jack are depicted fishing Silver Creek. Robert Gardner takes his place on one of his magnificent steads. The late mule driver Bobby Tanner can be seen leading his mule team to the Big Hitch ore wagons.

Harris’ uncle Eusebio Arriaga, the first non-Austrian in the Sun Valley Ski School, portrays Sun Valley’s ski heritage. Sun Valley Music Festival violinist Erin Schreiber plays her violin in front of the Sun Valley Pavilion, while two-time Soviet Olympic pairs champion Sergei Grinkov and Ekaterina “Katia” Gordeeva take a spin on the ice outside the Sun Valley Lodge, showcasing Sun Valley’s storied ice-skating history.

“I love the detail,” said Tina Gorby, as she took a short break from her bank duties to check out the mural. “Look at the detail with the sheep, the violinist, the figure skaters. I like how it shows the old and the new taking us from way back to now. It looks so good and I’m glad it’s up in time for Wagon Days.”

Kathryn Gardner, who pitched in to help Harris paint the boards with a yellow background early on, agreed: “We’ve looked at this for two-plus years. Now it’s time for everyone else to see it.”

Ralph Harris said it was shocking how brilliant the color was: "We're looking at ways we can put a QR code on it so people can tap it and learn the history behind the scenes."