STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

The Blaine County Historical Museum came alive with the sounds of conversation Wednesday night as guests wandered past a turn-of-the-century kitchen, an old hospital ward and the darkened entrance to a replica mine shaft.

It was Night at the Museum, the museum's annual celebration thanking volunteers and supporters while introducing first-timers to one of Hailey's most storied buildings.

This year the evening carried extra significance. In honor of the 250th birthday of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the museum served a signature cocktail called the Cherry Bounce--a drink with deep presidential roots.

Jane Rosen and Bob McCloud laugh as Char Roth takes their picture.

The recipe traces back to George Washington himself. Striking out to find a navigable route from the Atlantic to the Mississippi Valley, Washington loaded his trunk and canteens with madeira, port wine and cherry bounce. Martha Washington served the cocktail in the president's house, and on this evening it was poured again, accompanied by cheese puffs dipped in a spicy hot cherry jam and Crumbl cookies.

Director Rebecca Cox, who was at the museum with her husband Charles Cox until nearly midnight, painting the front door red with her husband after spotting the “tired trim,” described a museum that is, in her words, “basically springing up this year.

New staffing, new board members and a full calendar of programming are part of the picture. A new mural by Sage School student Brooke Vagias celebrating historic authors of the Wood River Valley is nearing completion on the outside of the building, the idea sparked when board member Mary Gervase texted Cox a photo of a beautiful mural she spotted while traveling.

But the centerpiece of the museum's summer is Wild West Days, a three-day outdoor education event for fourth graders that runs Monday through Wednesday, May 18-20.

Joan Davies noted her late husband John’s buckskin behind her—it was tanned to be breathable, she said.

The event had been run for more than 30 years by an outside educator, who announced he would not be coming back this year. Rather than let the tradition die, the museum stepped in to coordinate it.

It will encompass 12 stations drawing on partners from across the valley. The Bellevue Museum is running the sourdough starter station. Ketchum is bringing a teepee. A member of the Bannock tribe will be on hand, and two live sheep are expected.

Students will mine for fool's gold, learn from a Native American cultural representative and--perhaps most memorably--scrub cocoa-stained rags clean on an old-fashioned washboard before hanging them up to dry in what is sure to be a race.

Meghan Flanz, who was named vice president of the museum board just the day before the event, said that kind of hands-on learning is exactly the point.

Schroeder Stribling and Stephanie Nelson enjoy a moment with Mike the Player Piano Man.

"If you learn it at that age and you learn it through experiential learning, it's going to stick with you forever," she said. "And then you will love this state even more because you'll understand all that came before — other races, other people, other cultures."

Nearly 275 students are expected over three days, with roughly three volunteers per station working each shift. Cox laughed about finally getting the event into the rear-view mirror, but said the enthusiasm from the community has been remarkable. If you ask people whether they want to help, the answer is yes.

“It’s not by any means the museum show, but it makes sense for the museum to coordinate it,” said Board Member Jane Rosen. “This is our first time and we’re so excited about it.”

The museum is also leading the Wood River Valley's America 250 celebration, with Cox tapped to spearhead the Fourth of July parade effort for all of Blaine County. The parade will open with several floats tracing Idaho's history from 1840, when Lincoln signed Idaho into territorial status through to the present day.

Jane Rosen and Meghan Flanz show off their historical cocktail flair.

Each city is sponsoring a float, and Cox said she is actively recruiting volunteers to help build them in the coming weeks.

"We were here as a state and a community during all of those pivotal times in U.S. history," Flanz said. "It will be really interesting to see how we can bring to life the most important parts of American history — but with a local spin."

Not everyone at the evening had been through the museum's doors before. Char Roth, who has lived in Blaine County for decades and taught in Ketchum for much of that time, admitted it was her first visit to the Hailey museum.

"Isn't that awful?" she said, laughing. But she made up for lost time, working her way through the indigenous peoples exhibit, the writer's corner, the schoolhouse, the player piano and the mine shaft, which she described as walking with the light through history.

Schroeder Stribling, who moved to the valley full time in November after summering here since 2001, was also a first-timer. She came at the invitation of Stephanie Nelson, a friend from St. Thomas Episcopal Church, and ended up in the mine shaft carrying a lantern and guessing at the names and uses for the tools and artifacts on display. She did not get many right, but she came away with one new fact: the mining in this valley was largely for galena ore, an impure form of silver that had to be separated out before the silver could be used.

"That's my latest, greatest Idaho fact," she said.

Stribling, a retired nonprofit CEO who spent her career in mental health, housing and social services, said she is looking for ways to be useful in her new community. And she was intrigued by everything she saw of those who have gone before her.

The evening wound down with guests finishing their Cherry Bounces and the museum's newly painted red door glowing under the new red awnings out front. Inside, the mine shaft waited in the dark, the washboard sat ready for next week's fourth graders and the floats for the Fourth of July parade were still to be built.

The museum, it seems, is just getting started.