Telluride Museum: Update for Summer Season!

14 May Telluride Museum: Update for Summer Season!

The following is a note from the Telluride Museum family. Advance sign-up is required for the Lone Tree Cemetery tour. Please call (970) 728-3344 to register.

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Howdy everyone. Enjoy the final few weeks of peace and quiet!

While the off-season has blessed us with a bit of a respite up here at the Telluride Historical Museum, we are beginning to feel the buzz of summer approaching in the not-so- distant future. This is not only because we have spotted a few large bees in the area, but as we begin to see the our annual exhibit come together, we can’t help but feel excited to share with the community what our Director of Programs and Exhibits, Molly, has been hard at work on over the last several months!

While we officially re-open to the public on Thursday, June 2nd, we will be hosting an opening reception to unveil this new show entitled The Long Run: 50 Years of the Telluride Ski Area on Thursday, June 9th at 6pm. Join us for a ’70s-themed evening full of community, delicious appetizers, drinks, and most importantly, some utterly fascinating history!

We are also thrilled to be offering our typical slate of summer programs this year including our ever-popular walking tours with Ashley Boling, which will resume in their regular routine, meeting at the Museum every Tuesday and Thursday at 1pm. We hope you’ll join us for a delightful, 90-minute whirl through Telluride History.

Looking for a more… peaceful … saunter through the past? We’ll be hosting our tours of the Lone Tree Cemetery every 3rd Friday of the month at 1pm all summer long.

These familiar walking tours are just the tip of the iceberg. We have a slew of offerings coming your way from Hikes into History to our traditional 4th of July root beer floats and so much more! Keep your eyes and ears out for more info on all our summer happenings in the coming weeks. We are sure you won’t want to miss what we have in store.

Until then, wishing you the very best end to your off-season and we’re looking forward to seeing you at your Museum real soon!

Sincerely,

Your Museum Family

Staff News:

Spotlight on Museum Executive Director Kiernan Lannon.

This month’s Meet the Museum Staff features our fantastic Executive Director, Kiernan Lannon! The wizard behind the curtain up here at the Telluride Historical Museum, Kiernan is officially celebrating 7 years of Directorship with THM this May. We are so very grateful to have him!

How long have you been with the Telluride Historical Museum?

It will officially be seven years as of May 11th. Time sure does fly when you’re having fun.

What excites you about history, and our local history in particular?

There’s so much about history that I find exciting and fascinating. To me, history is some of the most valuable knowledge you can try to gather. I think it’s really the depth of understanding that history can allow that makes it so important. There really isn’t a better way to truly get a sense of something – whether that is a person, a place, an idea, whatever it is – than to explore where that something came from and how that something came to be what it is today – to understand the evolution of how then became now. I think it is impossible to have any real understanding of the present without some real study of the past. Exploring history is central to the process of discovering meaning. And while that is true no matter what history you are delving into, I think gaining that understanding or finding that meaning is particularly rewarding when it comes to a place or community. I just feel like I know Telluride so much better because I’ve tried to steep myself in its history. I appreciate this town and community more for having been properly introduced, so to speak.

Who is your favorite Telluride Historical Figure and why?

I think L.L. Nunn is probably someone I’ve been especially fascinated by. His “grand experiment” with AC power was such a landmark achievement and so critically important to the development of the country. It’s hard not to be left in awe at the accomplishment – particularly in light of all the obstacles he and his team had to overcome – most notably the uncertainty of whether it could actually, you know, work. On top of all that, Nunn seems to be such a complex person. I’ve certainly enjoyed the challenge of trying to get a better sense of what, for lack of a better way of putting it, made him tick.

What has been your favorite museum memory?

I’ve been lucky that the past seven years have been full of potential favorite memories, so it’s hard to pick one in particular. Let me say this though, if I were to make a list of my top 50 THM memories, a pretty healthy chunk of them would involve a Jeep trip or hike with Rudy Davison. They’re always fun, full of great conversation, and you can’t help but to learn a ton. What could be better than that?

If you could only take one meal and one drink with you to a desert island for the rest of your days, what would you take?

I’m definitely a meat and potatoes kind of guy, so I really want to say that a beef and mashed potato situation would be just the ticket, but mashed potatoes and unrelenting sand seem like a recipe for a gritty disaster. I guess I’d probably settle on a solid roast beef sandwich and fries. As for the drink, Gatorade would seem pretty useful in that type of environment.

If I’m being 100% honest, though, I would pick whatever meal could only be prepared on a fully functioning boat or was most conducive to turning into a viable raft. A desert island’s worth of sun and sand? Yeah, that…