Museum hosts Bad Hand for annual meeting
Native American collection part of Phase I $5 million fundraising goal and expansion plan for the Museum
by Dawn Ballou, Pinedale Online!
March 14, 2025
The Museum of the Mountain Man held their Spring Thaw Party and annual membership meeting on Thursday, March 6th in Pinedale. The annual event is a chance for the members of the Sublette County Historical Society to get together, hear news of what is ahead for the upcoming year, and elect new board members and officers for the society. Two new people were elected to the board, Lana Koppenhafer and Dave Bell. Elected officers for 2025 were Jerry Boyer-President, Kim Bright-Vice President, Dan Tau-Treasurer, and Kaidi Raney-Secretary. The Museum thanked leaving President Ken Marincic and board member Jon Boroff for their years of service on the Board of Trustees.
Special guest speaker was Plains Indian historian, Michael Bad Hand, who has been coming to the Museum as a speaker during Green River Rendezvous for the past thirty some-odd years. Now ready to retire, the Museum is purchasing Bad Hand’s collection of over 1500 original and authentic replica Native American items. This collection will vastly add to the Museum’s ability to tell the story of Native American in the Rocky Mountain fur trade of the early 1800s. The Museum had two special mannequin displays for the event and plans to create several new displays on special mannequins for when they open in May for their summer season. Items in the Bad Hand collection have been extensively researched and are hand-made with period materials and techniques. They represent information Bad Hand has researched during his 40+ year career learning about Plains Indian tribes from the early to mid-1800s. The collection includes items he has collected and created as part of his decades of giving presentations around the country on Native American culture.
Bad Hand’s collection includes an extensive research library and more than 1500 historically accurate re-creations and replicas of garments and accoutrements related to the lifestyle and livelihood of 16 major Plains Indian Native American tribes. This was the world the mountain men entered in the first half of the 1800s at a time when both the outsiders and natives had something to offer each other and lived in cooperation with each other. The collection will allow the Museum to create displays showing complete clothing outfits for men/warriors, women, and children, by tribe, and decade in time period of the early 1800s. There will be interpretation on the importance of what different things on the clothing meant regarding war honors and rank symbolism, such as human hair locks, ermine, fur, feathers, shells and beads, and paint designs. The collection is especially important today as many Native American artifacts in museums around the country are being repatriated back to tribes, with some items being lost forever to public display and professional preservation, and decimating some museum’s collections and ability to interpret early Native American history.
Obtaining the Bad Hand Collection is one of three major goals for the Museum of the Mountain Man as part of their current $5 million expansion goal. They also plan to construct a replica fur trade fort on their north lawn, between the Museum and the new Critical Access Hospital across the street. The 100-foot by 100-foot wooden stockade fort will have interior cabins, a Bourgeois house, two block houses, and an interior raised catwalk along the exterior log walls. The fort will allow the Museum to expand on their 23-year partnership with the American Mountain Man Association (AMM). It will allow the Museum to hold more living history demonstrations all summer long including blacksmithing, beaver trapping, hide tanning, clothing, tool making, fire making, fur pressing, trading post, fort living, equipment and fur storage, and more. The log fort will be based on known period forts such as Fort Bonneville, Fort Laramie, and Fort Bridger. The Museum hopes to begin construction of the fort in the summer of 2025.
The third component of the Museum’s $5 million expansion plan includes a curatorial facility to create much-needed climate temperature and humidity-controlled archival storage space, artifact care facilities, photography and video room, freezer space, and administrative space. At present, the Museum has grown to full capacity on their storage space and need more room to fulfill their mission to preserve, protect, and interpret mountain man and Sublette County history into the future. The long-term capital goal is $30 million for Museum expansion, a Native American wing, exhibit development, new galleries, a conference center, rare art exhibits, experience theater, administrative space, settlement era expansion, additional staffing, outside landscaping, and parking improvements.
The Museum is open seasonally seven days a week from May through October. They are closed during the winter from November through April, but off-season visits are welcome and can easily be arranged by calling the Museum during normal business hours at 307-367-4101. More information can be found online at www.MMMuseum.com and on their Facebook page.
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