We’re managing to stay busy. In fact, the Museum’s doors being temporarily shuttered has provided our curators with the perfect excuse to rearrange. All in the spirit of creating new “old” displays for our patrons to enjoy in the future.

Patagonia is located in mining country so we’ve added new artifacts to those exhibits that are anchored by a huge mineral display case that is on long-term loan from the Cypress Mines Corporation.

We’ve recreated a turn of the century classroom because the building the Museum is housed in was the longest in-contiguous-use elementary school in the state at the time it closed. Serving the community from 1914 – 2014 is quite impressive, don’t you agree?

Small town commercial enterprises deserve mention so we’re currently featuring a scaled-down version of A.S. Henderson’s general store, as well as some cool old surveying tools and signage from the Bob Lennon collection.

In fact, there is so much that we want to share with the public that the board approved the conversion of the classroom that had been used as a meeting room into a public display area. The curator’s plans for that space include updated exhibits featuring the trades that have made Patagonia a thriving community over the past 100+ years.

Carolina and Hannah, the hard-working young women who are the current student docents, helped us with the first new exhibit, a tribute to the medical community in Patagonia. There’s no doubt that Dr. Delmar Mock is is the most well-known and beloved medical professional having served the area for 38 years. Affectionately known as “Doc Mock”, the town named a large portion of its park system in his honor. That said, it’s interesting to note that the original doctor in town was a woman, Dr. Eva Stevens Henderson, who obtained her medical degree in 1902. The story of women in the health care field in Patagonia continued with locally born Carolina Valenzuela Montoya who was Santa Cruz County’s first public health nurse. The family healthcare clinic in town was originally named after her, another tribute to the role of professional women in the wild west.

That’s a sampling of what we’ve been up to while our doors are closed. Stay tuned for updates as our curators continue the work of making old things seem new again.

The National Votes for Women Trail and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation have honored the Patagonia Museum by sponsoring a suffrage sign marker that will be displayed on the grounds of the 1914 Grammar School. In 1915, a special election was held in Santa Cruz County and the Grammar School was the voting site for the Patagonia community. At the time there were at least 31 women registered to vote in Patagonia. The suffrage sign will honor these women and Amalia Valenzuela and Mary Kane in particular, as Hispanic women who pursued their right to vote at a time when it was unacceptable in much of the country.

The 1913 Official Register of Electors listing Mary Kane as one of six registered voters in Crittenden.

A brief ceremony to celebrate this suffrage sign marker will take place along with our annual meeting on Saturday, January 23, 2021, at 10:30 am, on the grounds of our museum facility, 100 School Street. Mary Melcher who received her Ph.D from Arizona State University in American History, will be our guest speaker. Mary is an oral historian, consultant, curator, historian, author and the driving force who made this recognition possible.

The board of trustees sends a heartfelt thank you to Arizona Humanities for the grant recently awarded to the Patagonia Museum. Funding for this grant was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The monies will be used to offset our operating expenses that would normally be covered by our fundraising efforts.

In case you are unfamiliar with their work, Arizona Humanities is a statewide 501C3 that has supported public programs that promote understanding of the human experience with cultural, educational, and nonprofit organizations across Arizona since 1973. You can find more about them on their website.

A field trip to the local museum may not sound like fun to every kid but in this case, we’re pleased to report a good time was had by the Lobos from Mr. CW’s 5th grade class.

FRONT ROW: Mr. CW, Kannon, Alex, Losiram and Tristan   BACK ROW: Erika, Vivi, Amaya and Isela

The good times began when we learned Mr. CW had taught in the facility towards the end of its 100-year run as the elementary school in Patagonia. Several of the students also shared fond memories of the classrooms from their kindergarten days.

The hosts (our curators Tom & Linda Shore) are both former teachers so they devised a way to work a bit of learning into the trip. The kids teamed up to complete a crossword puzzle based on the clues they discovered in a scavenger hunt in the displays in the former classrooms.  Entertainment included a rendition of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” on the player piano. Yes, there was dancing.

It was only fitting that the field trip ended with a few minutes spent on the jungle gym….for old time’s sake. Kids only, just like it was back in the day.

In mid-March, the Museum board of trustees made the decision to close the facility to visitors effective immediately. Like the rest of the world, we hope this health crisis comes to a swift end but we understand it is imperative that we too do our part to #flattenthecurve.

However, closing to the public does not mean the team will be twiddling their thumbs when there is a long list of projects to tackle.  Complementing the exterior coat of paint our home was given a few months ago, we’re going to take time to spiff the interior up as well. New paint and new lighting in the hall will brighten things up a bit. Our curators will also be constructing a series of new displays based on recent acquisitions from the George Proctor and Bob Lenon collections. They’ve even acquired a few mysterious and/or scary things that were once used by Doc Mock. Yes, there will be a new look on the inside of the museum when the doors re-open.

In addition, we’re going to start work on an exterior project that has been a vision for the past few years. We received permission from the Patagonia school district (our landlord) to install an ADA ramp on the back of the building a year ago. Since then, we’ve been raising funds for that effort in the hopes that the project would be completed in the next few years.
Thanks to a grant we received the Patagonia Regional Community Fund in November 2019, plus a few generous member donations, we are about 60% of the way towards our goal which meant a new way of accessing the museum seemed realistic for the 2021 timeframe.

That was the plan until the real world intervened. When the board made the decision to close, they also decided the time was right to move ahead with this project so that the museum is ready for ALL our visitors when our doors reopen. There are no real-time photos to share yet but rest assured that the ramp will be practical, sturdy and will look as though the original builders of the schoolhouse in 1914 thought a century ahead.

Stay tuned and stay safe, everyone.