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Early Sun Valley featured a wide array of animal residents including ducks, geese, many breeds of dog and perhaps most unusually, a tame family of antelope. Most well-known of these antelope was one named Annie, featured in this picture from the Community Library’s collection posing with Lucille Ball.

Annie and her three children were known for taking swims in the resort’s lake, elegantly leaping across the golf course, and following guests around as they enjoyed their stay at Sun Valley. So liked were the antelope by guests and staff alike that when landscape gardener Charlie Davidson complained that they were eating all the pansies, resort founder Averell Harriman reportedly responded that he should simply “Plant more pansies.”

Perhaps the most dramatic story surrounding the antelope is recounted by famed ski film director Warren Miller. In March of 1951, as Miller was just starting his storied film career, he was in Sun Valley to show his first film in the Sun Valley Opera House. While preparing food in the back of his truck, he recalls Annie rounding the corner, jumping into him, and subsequently cutting her shoulder badly on the bumper of his truck. For what it’s worth, Sun Valley publicist Dorice Taylor instead recalled a different antelope named Andy being hit by a car while crossing Sun Valley’s driveway.

With Annie (or Andy) now bleeding profusely, Warren Miller and his associates decided the best course of action was to bring the antelope to the Sun Valley Lodge’s third floor hospital. Dr. Moritz furiously objected to the presence of the bleeding, disheveled antelope in his surgery, but the nurse on duty gave Miller the materials and instructions to sew up the wounded antelope outside. After successfully sewing up the shoulder wound in the headlights of his truck and the freezing cold, Miller recounts the antelope struggling to its feet and staggering off into the dark.

In this photograph of Annie and Lucille Ball, the antelope’s gentle temperament towards the guests shines through, though Ball confessed afterwards that she was terrified of animals. Sun Valley’s eccentric animal residents definitely contributed a great deal to the atmosphere of the resort in its star-studded early days.

From the Dorice Taylor Collection, F 06252, Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History

The summer of 1884 was an exciting time to be living in the Wood River Valley. The mines were booming, the railroad had arrived in Hailey, and just a couple years earlier, Hailey had been declared the county seat of Alturas County in a hotly contested special election with Bellevue. Befitting its new status, the county had commissioned a new courthouse to be built in Hailey in 1882. At the cost of $40,000, funded through bonds, the new courthouse was the most expensive building in the Idaho Territory at the time. The courthouse was due to be completed in the summer of 1884, and the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a fraternal organization of Union Civil War veterans, was throwing a ball at the courthouse to celebrate its opening.

The event would also serve as a fundraiser for the fledgling Hailey GAR post, named E. D. Baker after US Senator Edward Dickinson Baker from Oregon. Baker, a staunch unionist and a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, was killed in an early battle of the Civil War and remains the only sitting US senator to ever die in a military engagement.

This small newspaper ad, now held in the archive of the Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History, was distributed to advertise this grand occasion to the valley’s residents. Though delayed a week due to construction delays, the inaugural ball took place on July 1^st, 1884, and was a great success. Making the front-page of the Wood River Times Weekly the following day, it was written, “All of 60 couples were in attendance, including 10 couples from Bellevue, and dancing was continued until after 4 o’clock this morning – something quite unusual. Nor was any time lost between dances. Ten and nine quadrille sets were on the floor at one time, and very few failed to return after supper.” The paper also notes that even more would have been in attendance if not for the conditions of the roads preventing a group from Ketchum from attending. The Times reports that the ball surely brought in more than $100 for the GAR.

This newspaper ad and the event it advertised serve as a great window into the vibrancy and excitement in the valley at the peak of its mining boom. Similarly, the same courthouse from 1884 still stands in Hailey today and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an incredible glimpse into the history of the Wood River Valley.

More here from the Center for Regional History.

by Bob Odenkirk

Emmy Award-winning and New York Times bestselling writer, comedian, and actor Bob Odenkirk and his daughter, illustrator Erin Odenkirk, present poetic nonsense for all ages—perfect for fans of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky!

Bob Odenkirk began writing these poems with his children when they were little, compiling the poetry into a homemade book entitled Olde Time Rhymes. He wanted Nate and Erin to understand that actual people had written the books the family loved to read and to instill in them the feeling that they could be writers and illustrators themselves. Almost twenty years later, when the Odenkirks found themselves quarantined under the same roof, they revisited these mostly silly, sometimes poignant works. It wasn’t until Erin began to create illustrations to accompany the words, though, that the book grew to be something much bigger than an Odenkirk family treasure.

From the titular made-up word for a blanket fort, an adorable dog with a penchant for the zoomies, and a father teaching his kids how umbrellas work, the subjects of these works, complemented by Erin’s whimsical and detailed linework, come alive on these pages. Featuring over seventy poems, Zilot & Other Important Rhyme s will delight readers young and old.

Find it in Juvenile Non-Fiction here.

A Memoir in Words and Pictures by Eric Gansworth

The term “Apple” is a slur in Native communities across the country. It’s for someone supposedly “red on the outside, white on the inside.”

In Apple (Skin to the Core), Eric Gansworth tells his story, the story of his family–of Onondaga among Tuscaroras–of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds.

Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.

Find it in YA Fiction here.

Awards and Accolades:

• Winner of the American Indian Youth Literature Award
• Printz Honor Winner
• National Book Award Longlist
• TIME 10 Best YA and Children’s Books of the Year
• NPR Best of the Year
• Shelf Awareness Best of the Year
• Publishers Weekly Big Indie Books of Fall
• Amazon Best Book of the Month
• AICL Best YA Books of the Year
• CSMCL Best Multicultural Children’s Books of the Year
  
• “Stirring.. Raw and moving.”–TIME
• “Beautiful imagery and with words that soar and scald.”–The Buffalo News
• “Easily one of the best books to be published in 2020. The kind of book bound to save lives.”–LitHub
• “A powerful narrative about identity and belonging.”–Paste Magazine
• “Timely and important.”–Booklist, starred review
• “Searing yet dryly funny.”–The Bulletin, starred review
• “Exceptional.”–Shelf-Awareness, starred review
• “Captivating.”–School Library Journal, starred review

by Pablo Neruda

This bilingual Spanish-English edition is the first illustrated selection of questions, 70 in all, from Pablo Neruda’s original poem (320 questions) The Book of Questions.

Holding the wonder and mystery of childhood and the experience and knowing that come with growing up, these questions are by turns lyrical, strange, surreal, spiritual, historical and political. They foreground the natural world, and their curiosity transcends all logic; and because they are paradoxes and riddles that embrace the limits of our ability to know, they engage with human freedom in the deepest way, removing the burden and constraint that somehow, we are meant to have answers to every question.

Gorgeously, cosmically illustrated by Paloma Valdivia, here Neruda’s questions, already visual in themselves, gain a double visuality that makes them even more palpable and resonant. So clearly rooted in Chilean landscapes as they are, the questions are revealed as a communion with nature and its mysteries.

Find it in Juv NF Spanish here.

Awards:

• A New York Times Best Children’s Book of 2022
• A Marginalian (fka Brain Pickings ) Favorite Book of 2022
• A New York Times Bestseller!
• A USBBY Outstanding International Book of 2023
• A 2023 Bologna Ragazzi Award Amazing Bookshelf Selection
• Selected for the Academy of American Poets 2022 Featured Fall Books List for Young Readers
• Starred reviews in The Horn Book, Kirkus, SLJ, and PW !

Step into the rich tapestry of Basque culture with our zahato Bag, a testament to tradition and heritage. Crafted from tanned and close-cropped goatskin, this bag serves as a distinctive Basque variant of the Spanish bota bag. Beyond its practical use for carrying wine, it stands as a symbol of Basque craftsmanship and identity.

Adorned with a vibrant painted illustration, our zahato Bag depicts a bullfighter in action, waving a red cape at a bucking bull. This imagery not only reflects the Basque fascination with bullfighting but also encapsulates the spirit of resilience and bravery inherent in Basque tradition.

Originating from the Basque Country in Europe, Basques first migrated to Idaho in the mid-1800s, initially drawn by the promise of gold. However, as opportunities in gold dwindled, many Basques turned to sheep herding, a skill they brought with them from their homeland.

In Ketchum and Hailey, Idaho, this Basque community flourished, weaving its vibrant culture into the fabric of local life. From traditional festivals to culinary delights, the Basque influence permeates the region, leaving a lasting mark on Idaho’s cultural landscape.

This zahato bag is newly on display in the Wood River Museum’s Cabinet of Wonders! We invite you to visit the museum to see this and many other fascinating objects that provide insight to Idaho’s rich cultural history.