OTM Receives American Rescue Plan Grant

OTM is excited to announce that the museum has received a $15,000 grant from Arizona Humanities! Funding for this grant was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP). The NEH received funds from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 in order to provide emergency relief to institutions and organizations working in the humanities that have been adversely affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

OTM is owned and operated by the Winslow Historical Society, an independent nonprofit funded primarily by the City of Winslow and with additional funds from memberships, donations, and gift-shop sales. In 2020 and 2021, the museum’s five-month closure, combined with reduced visitor numbers once it reopened, decreased on-site donations and gift-shop sales.

Along with a reduction in City of Winslow funds, these losses negatively impacted the museum’s prudent reserve and threatened its ability to continue operations at the current level. OTM took advantage of this rare, one-time opportunity to apply for operating funds. The ARP Grant will go a long way toward righting the fiscal ship of a small, rural nonprofit history museum in these financially precarious times.

OTM is grateful to both the NEH, an independent federal agency created in 1965 that supports research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities; and Arizona Humanities, the nonprofit state affiliate of the NEH that does the same here in Arizona; for making ARP funding accessible to the Old Trails Museum and other small humanities institutions across the state.

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2022 Historical Calendar Now Available

The Old Trails Museum’s 2022 historical calendar, Winslow: Then and Now, Volume II, is on sale now! The 2022 edition – still priced at $10 – is available at the museum, La Posada Hotel, On the Corner Gifts, and the Winslow Visitors Center/Hubbell Trading Post. You can also order calendars through the OTM Online Store, with $2 added to the price for shipping. Your purchase supports the museum, is sales-tax-free, and keeps your shopping dollars local!

Volume II of the Then-and-Now editions – Volume I was published in 2019 – offers a popular approach for illustrating a locality’s historic preservation efforts: a historic photograph alongside a contemporary image of the same property. Both calendars feature preserved buildings still in use for their original purposes or rehabilitated for new businesses or public use. This edition once again includes a self-guided walking/driving tour of the featured properties as they appear in the calendar: traveling east on Second Street, then west on Third Street, then to other locations in town.

OTM Director Ann-Mary Lutzick developed this calendar, and International Minute Press of Flagstaff did the printing. The large historical images are drawn from the OTM Collections or graciously on loan from Winslow residents. Text was adapted from OTM archives, National Register of Historic Places nominations, and Winslow Mail articles by Janice Henling and others. For the small contemporary images, much of the information was provided by the people who currently work in – and lovingly maintain – these historic structures. The museum extends our gratitude to Dona Bruchman Harris, Tescue and Lawrence Kenna, and Lori Bentley Law for loaning their images; Harris and Law for sharing their research; and Law and Dan Lutzick for their invaluable feedback.

OTM’s annual historical calendar is a fundraiser for the museum thanks to our generous advertisers: Barton Architecture, Bojo’s Grill & Sports Club, Cox’s Automotive, Dominique’s On the Corner, Harley Hendricks Realty, Kenna Properties, La Posada Hotel, the Leavitt Group, Mojo Coffee Company, Motor Palace Mercantile, the Rotary Club of Winslow, Snowdrift Art Space, and the Winslow Chamber of Commerce.

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Virtual 2021 Fall History Highlight

The Old Trails Museum will present our 2021 Fall History Highlight online through the Virtual AZ Speaks program from Arizona Humanities. On Saturday, November 27, at 2 pm, OTM will host Dr. Laura Tohe’s presentation of More than Pocahontas and Squaws: Indigenous Women Coming into Visibility.

Arizona Humanities has temporarily transitioned their popular speaker presentations online so that statewide audiences can still enjoy high-quality cultural programming in these challenging times. Register for the virtual program here.

In this engaging presentation, Dr. Tohe will explore how Indigenous American women have contributed service to Arizona and the US, yet remain invisible in the media and stereotyped in early films. Nevertheless, they have been honored in all areas of public service – law, medicine, literature, military, education, and activism, with awards such as the Presidential Freedom and the MacArthur (genius award), among others.

Among some traditional tribal cultures, women’s lives are modeled after female heroes and sacred women who exemplify and express courage and kinship values. Rites of passage celebrate female creativity and the transformative nature of women, hence there was not a need for the concept of feminism. This talk presents related aspects of Indigenous culture and how women have contributed in significant ways, not only to their tribal nations, but to contemporary American life.

Laura Tohe is Diné. She is Sleepy Rock people clan born for the Bitter Water people clan and is the daughter of a Navajo Code Talker. She is Professor Emerita with Distinction from Arizona State University and is the current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate. A librettist and an award-winning poet, her books include No Parole Today, Meeting the Spirit of Water (chapbook), Sister Nations (Co-editor), Tséyi, Deep in the Rock, and Code Talker Stories (oral history). Her commissioned libretto, Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio, world premiered for the Phoenix Symphony, and her latest libretto, Nahasdzaan in the Glittering World, was performed in France in 2019.  Among her awards are the 2020 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship; 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award; and the Arizona Book Association’s Glyph Award for Best Poetry.

OTM’s 2021 Fall History Highlight is made possible by Arizona Humanities, and we are grateful to them for giving us the opportunity to offer this program in a safe and engaging way.

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Virtual 2021 Summer History Highlight

The Old Trails Museum will present our 2021 Summer History Highlight online on Saturday, July 24, at 2 pm. Sativa Peterson, News Content Program Manager for the State of Arizona Research Library, will lead attendees through a free, interactive workshop called Revealing History – A Look at Community Through Arizona’s Historical Newspapers. Click here to register for this virtual program.

Using headlines, editorials, political cartoons, and photojournalism, Peterson will introduce audiences to Arizona’s historical newspapers; to the publishers, editors, and journalists who helped establish news writing in the early days of Arizona statehood; and to some of the defining moments in state history that they covered. Attendees will hear how they reported on women’s suffrage efforts in Arizona; which newspapers were published along the US/Mexico border during Prohibition; and about early African American community newspapers and the longest-running Spanish-language newspapers in the state.

Peterson will also demonstrate how to do one’s own searching using the Arizona Memory Project and Chronicling America websites, so that attendees can continue to explore historical newspapers on their own. Using journalism as a lens for reflecting on the human experience, these rich and valuable resources can show how we governed ourselves, faced conflict, and celebrated triumphs. They allow us to see how people viewed an event when it happened and to trace changing views over time. In short, historical newspapers capture the everyday life of the people and places of Arizona.

A Winslow native and graduate of Winslow High School, Peterson went on to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, with a master’s degree in journalism and the Pratt Institute with a master’s in library and information science. She served as Project Director for the National Digital Newspaper Program grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that allowed the Arizona State Library to continue digitizing historical newspaper collections.

The 2021 Summer History Highlight is made possible in part by an Arizona Humanities grant funding multiple Revealing History online workshops, and we are grateful to them for giving us the opportunity to offer this presentation in a safe and engaging way.

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History Minutes on KINO Radio

Many thanks to KINO Radio (1230 AM) for airing History Minutes with the Old Trails Museum, our series of pre-recorded spots highlighting artifacts from the OTM Collections and encouraging listeners to come to the museum to see them in person.

The spots were created by OTM Director Ann-Mary Lutzick, who thanks Maree McHugh for her producing talents and Lori Bentley Law for her help as well. The spots air every other week, starting March 17 and continuing through September 2021, at these days and times:

  • Wednesday at 7:30 am, 12:00 noon, and 2:30 pm
  • Thursday at 7:30 am, 10:30 am, and 2:30 pm
  • Friday at 7:30 am, 12:00 noon, and 2:30 pm

If a museum visit is not possible, we’re also posting an image and description of each artifact on the OTM Facebook page, and a short video of the same on the OTM YouTube Channel. Seen here is Winslow artist Joseph Cruz Rodriquez’s oil painting, Sunset Crossing on the Little Colorado River, depicting the arrival of the railroads to the Winslow area.

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Virtual 2021 Spring History Highlight

The Old Trails Museum will present our 2021 Spring History Highlight online through the Virtual AZ Speaks program from Arizona Humanities. On Saturday, April 24, at 2 pm, OTM will host Dr. Robin Pinto’s presentation of The New Deal and the Civilian Conservation Corps in Arizona: Connections to Our Historic Landscapes.

Arizona Humanities has temporarily transitioned their popular speaker presentations online so that statewide audiences can still enjoy high-quality cultural programming in these challenging times. Register for the virtual program here.

In this engaging presentation, Dr. Pinto will explore the history of the New Deal and how Arizonans responded to its challenges. It is an inspirational story of how individuals worked to better themselves; a story of how communities took care of inhabitants and total strangers during drought and Depression; and a story of how we, as a state, improved the lives of all and left an important built legacy for generations to come.

That legacy is still written in our landscapes, buildings, and communities – including Winslow. Today, we use those historic sidewalks, schools, and post offices without knowing that they were built for us more than eighty years ago. We enjoy parks and forests that were restored for us long ago. We can celebrate those “bootstrap” labors and remind ourselves that we, too, can rise above adversity to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

Several years ago, also with funding from AZ Humanities, Dr. Pinto joined a group of historians to develop The New Deal in Arizona: Connections to Our Historic Landscape, a printed map that provides a brief history of the New Deal and describes more than fifty heritage tourism sites around Arizona with New Deal-era buildings, landscapes, and remnants. The University of Arizona Libraries have since created a New Deal in Arizona website with the map, site descriptions, photographs, and detailed directions to these historic projects, many of which are still in use today. As the website recommends, “Plan a New Deal journey today!”

Dr. Pinto, who has an MLA and PhD from the University of Arizona, studies the evolution of cultural landscapes in Arizona. She writes historical landscape assessments for the National Park Service; works with the BLM Heritage Technical Team to study landscape change at the Empire Ranch and Cienega Creek watershed; and volunteers for numerous non-profit preservation organizations. She recently completed a book with three other historians entitled Cowboys and Cowgirls around Ajo, Arizona.

OTM’s 2021 Spring History Highlight is made possible by Arizona Humanities, and we are grateful to them for giving us the opportunity to offer this program in a safe and engaging way.

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OTM Debuts Winslow History Film

In February 2021, the Old Trails Museum debuted A Brief History of Winslow, Arizona, a short film that illustrates the city’s major historical themes through historic and contemporary images along with filmed segments.

Developed by OTM Director Ann-Mary Lutzick and Winslow Historical Society Board Member Lori Bentley Law in 2020, the film provides a basic overview of Winslow’s history and gives viewers a framework to absorb even more information whenever they visit one of Winslow’s many historic sites and buildings.

OTM thanks Northland Pioneer College for giving us the incentive to create the film by asking the museum to contribute to their series of online personal-interest classes. Lutzick has given many slide-show talks on Winslow’s history, but creating a film posed a new and daunting challenge.

Luckily, Law – co-owner of the Motor Palace Mercantile and recent addition to the WHS Board – came to the rescue! Before moving to Winslow in 2018, she was an Emmy-award winning photojournalist for NBC-Los Angeles for twenty-three years. Law brought her expertise to the project, and A Brief History of Winslow, Arizona is vastly improved for it.

Now that the film has served its purpose for NPC, OTM offers it as a virtual complement to our physical exhibits. You can view the film on our Videos page, the OTM You Tube Channel, and the La Posada Website.

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Homolovi Exhibit Extended, Virtual Talk Added

Thanks to the generosity of the exhibit’s creators at the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, Life Along the River: Ancestral Hopi at Homol’ovi will be on view at the Winslow Arts Trust Museum through January 2022. The exhibit was originally scheduled to close at the WAT Museum in January 2021.

In addition, the Winslow partners hosted a virtual presentation on Saturday, January 23, by Dr. E. Charles Adams (at left), director of the Arizona State Museum’s Homol’ovi Research Program from 1985 to 2017. Life Along the River — which synthesizes more than thirty years of archaeological research by the program — features images, maps, and present-day Hopi voices that tell the story of the people who lived in seven villages along the Little Colorado River, near what is now Winslow, in the 1300s. In New Knowledge from Old Sites: Hopi at Homol’ovi (click to see recording), Dr. Adams discussed how that research revealed a timeline for the area, the relationships among its inhabitants, and the importance of the river in their lifeways.

The exhibit’s Winslow run is hosted by a partnership between Homolovi State Park, the Winslow Arts Trust (WAT), and the Old Trails Museum, and in cooperation with the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. You can see the Life Along the River exhibit at the WAT Museum by making a reservation with the La Posada Hotel Front Desk at 928-289-4366. You can also visit Homolovi State Park, located just a few miles east of La Posada, which is currently open with some restrictions.

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2021 Historical Calendar on Winslow Over Time

The Old Trails Museum’s 2021 historical calendar, Winslow Through the Decades, is on sale now! The 2021 edition – still priced at $10 – is available at the museum, La Posada Hotel, Arizona 66 Trading Company, On the Corner Gifts, and the Winslow Visitors Center/Hubbell Trading Post. You can also order calendars through the OTM Online Store, with $2 added to the price for shipping. Your purchase supports the museum, is sales-tax-free, and keeps your shopping dollars local!

The 2021 edition highlights aspects of Winslow’s history by decade, from its founding in 1880 through the 1960s. The past does not unfold in distinct time periods, but dividing Winslow’s history by decade can be a useful way to share it, as well as to illustrate how that history paralleled events on the national and even international stages.

This edition features photographs from the museum’s collections, or on loan from our supporters, that have never been published in an Old Trails Museum calendar, exhibit, or in our Images of America book, Winslow. Historical sources include Winslow Mail articles, adapted text from our publications and exhibits, and archival material from the museum and other repositories throughout Arizona.

Old Trails Museum Director Ann-Mary Lutzick developed this calendar, and International Minute Press of Flagstaff did the layout and printing. The museum extends our thanks to Tescue and Lawrence Kenna, Helen Jean Pollard, Deborah Stout Roberts, and the Madonna House for loaning photographs to this edition; to Lindsey Jauregui for sharing expertise on early Santa Fe engines; and to Lori Bentley Law and Dan Lutzick for their invaluable feedback.

OTM’s annual historical calendar is a fundraiser for the museum thanks to our generous advertisers: Arizona 66 Trading Company, Barton Architecture, Bojo’s Grill & Sports Club, Cox’s Automotive, Dominique’s On the Corner, Harley Hendricks Realty, Kenna Properties, La Posada Hotel, the Leavitt Group, Mojo Coffee Company, Motor Palace Mercantile, Snowdrift Art Space, and the Winslow Chamber of Commerce.

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