<\/p>\n
\u201cWe make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give,\u201d Winston Churchill said. Now, two Colorado native sons are practicing that wisdom by giving back to their hometowns. Both men have started nonprofit museums to augment their local tourist economy, and both museums are worth a visit.<\/p>\n
In 2006, on the eastern outskirts of Craig, rancher and sheepman Lou Wyman opened the Wyman Living History Museum in a 10,000-square-foot building that has everything from a sheepherder\u2019s wagon and a rare 1873 catcher\u2019s mask to a 1960 snub-nose, cab-over Jeep pickup with only 15,000 miles on it. Wyman, 84, says the catcher\u2019s mask, which is big, flat and made from thin metal \u201clooks like some Medieval mask they\u2019d put on to torture you.\u201d He also likes an 1893 typewriter that would have been a trial for secretaries to use because it has separate keys for capital letters.<\/p>\n
The museum contains a complete Colorado license plate collection and chain saws that weigh from 12 pounds to 200 pounds with blades from 1 to 5 feet long. There\u2019s a foot-powered dental drill. There\u2019s a blacksmith shop, a barn Wyman\u2019s father built in 1920 and the 1908 log country store from Pagoda in the Axial Basin with its original inventory from 60 years ago.<\/p>\n
My favorite item is a homemade canvas boat on a wooden frame that went down the Yampa River in 1941 before its two boaters enlisted in World War II. The museum also has their photos and journals. Then there\u2019s the 1915 Stevens Duryea, a rare car manufactured by the Stevens Arms & Ammunition Co. It\u2019s undergoing restoration.<\/p>\n
Wyman\u2019s dedicated volunteers have also repaired an antique one-horse wooden hay baler, but I want them to tackle the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad, also known as the Moffat Road, aging caboose, which sits on its special track. \u201cWe want learning experiences for people, not just a musty museum,\u201d Wyman tells me, and he\u2019s right. So he collects \u201cwhat\u2019s rare and unusual\u201d such as an M-47 or a 1,000 horsepower, 110,000 pound 1947 U.S. Army tank with a 90 mm gun and two .50-caliber machine guns.<\/p>\n
The V-12 Cadillac engine in the tank gets 3 gallons to the mile. He doesn\u2019t drive it much, but the volunteer trucker who went and retrieved it from Texas \u201chad a good time getting it here to Craig. Lots of people stopped and wanted photos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wyman\u2019s museum sits on 100 acres along U.S. Highway 40, which was the main route between Denver and Salt Lake City before the interstates went in. Bud Striegel\u2019s Rangely Automotive Museum in downtown Rangely, boasts white marble floors, vintage and classic cars on display and a scale model of Stonehenge in the front yard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been a ditch digger all my life. All I\u2019ve seen is the bottom of a ditch,\u201d explains Striegel, 75, who welded pipelines across the country and worked in eight states with 150 employees of WC Striegel Inc. With the downturn in oil and gas revenues, Striegel opened his museum last year to aid local tourism. \u201cI was raised here, and this is my town, my county and my state and I want to do everything I can to promote it. I hope my cars will encourage visitors to come through town, buy a burger and get a room. I want tourists to walk into the museum and catch their breath,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n
I certainly did. From the fancy woodwork at the entrance to the gleaming marble floor in the showroom, I was overwhelmed by the Cadillacs, Pierce Arrows, Lincolns and other rare cars I\u2019d only seen photos of, like his Auburn Boattail. Striegel prefers American classics, which are vintage autos built by custom chassis-makers between 1925 and 1948, but he also has a rare Ford jeep and unique motorcycles. I prefer his red El Camino pickup with its tailfins and sweeping rear window, though I\u2019d take the 1957 Chevy station wagon in a heartbeat.<\/p>\n
Just like his old buddy Lou Wyman, Striegel wants the public to enjoy his car collection. \u201cYou don\u2019t see any ropes. You can open all the doors. I don\u2019t mind little kids getting in the cars. I want them to remember the experience,\u201d he tells me with sincerity. He\u2019s giving back to his community because his father started the family business in 1945 when the Rangely oil field first boomed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOil\u2019s off now,\u201d he says with a sigh. \u201cSo I opened a little jewel for this run-down oil field town.\u201d He wants to snag car collectors cruising across the American West and get them to come off the interstates and drive through Rangely.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not easy. There\u2019s the expense of finding and restoring cars. \u201cI don\u2019t have a favorite car. I like all of them. I usually pick them up and haul \u2019em around myself. I\u2019ve been to Detroit, Seattle, everywhere,\u201d Striegel says.<\/p>\n
Before he started, he called his friend, Lou Wyman. \u201cLou, I\u2019m gonna open me a museum. What\u2019s it gonna cost me?\u201d he remembers with a laugh. Both men began their museums with free admission, but that may not last. There are plenty of ongoing bills to pay, yet this is their way of giving back, helping out. About the Rangely Automotive Museum, the residents in town \u201call like it,\u201d Striegel says.<\/p>\n
In Craig, locals have supported the Wyman Living History Museum so much that, \u201cWe\u2019re out of room. We\u2019ve got a lot of farm equipment and military stuff. We\u2019ve got something for everybody,\u201d Wyman says with satisfaction. Now, he\u2019s switched to frogs.<\/p>\n
His property includes an oxbow of the Yampa River created when the Moffat Railroad built tracks across a wetland in 1912 and left a unique ecosystem. Biologists from the University of Colorado-Boulder found more leopard frogs there than anywhere else in Colorado. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a jillion frogs,\u201d Wyman smiles. Children can see and hear the amphibians when they visit the museum.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the future? Enticing tourists. Bud Striegel seeks to restore more automobiles and constantly changes out his auto exhibit. He doesn\u2019t want to crowd the cars. He wants visitors to walk through his museum and get up close and personal with vehicles they may never see again.<\/p>\n
Wyman plans to have more events and summer activities and to move one of the last Moffat County one-room schoolhouses on to the property. He\u2019s left an endowment for the museum, but interest rates aren\u2019t what they used to be so there\u2019s more financial planning ahead.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t wait to go back. I love sharing the passion of collectors interested in the great age of American industrialism when our nation\u2019s workshops and factories produced autos and tools that made us the envy of the world.<\/p>\n
Once Lou Wyman rebuilds the Cadillac engine in his M-47 tank, he may ask me to ride in it, and I might. But if Bud Striegel gives me the keys to his \u201957 Chevy, I\u2019ll definitely take it for a spin.<\/p>\n