Take a virtual guided tour of the exhibit with Tom Blanchard!

Watch the video and see  and hear Tom take you through the lava flows. Don’t miss his stories of the geologic and botanical wonders in central Idaho. Click on the video play button.

The exhibit shares the stark beauty of one of Idaho’s most unique landscapes. With poetry and photographs from poet Will Peterson and photographer Roger Boe, see the ancient lava flows. You will catch the essence of Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. The park, located in Blaine County, is sixty-five miles southeast of Ketchum.

The pictures and words are a spiritual response to one of the American West’s unusual places. Visitors can find out more about the wonder of the place and also learn more about some of the plants and animals that make the lava flows their home.

The Idaho Museum of Natural History produced the exhibit “The Flows: Hidden Wonders of Craters of the Moon,” from twenty-five years of collaboration between the two: photographer Roger Boe and poet Will Peterson. Both Boe and Peterson are from Pocatello, Idaho. The exhibit is on loan through the IMNH Idaho Bound Traveling Exhibits program.

The Artists

Roger Boe is an amateur photographer and pediatrician who has explored and photographed the Great Rift of Idaho for over twenty years. He was a co-founder of Portneuf Valley Photographic Society and has shown his photographs many times. Some of the exhibitions were held at Idaho State University and the Idaho Museum of Natural History.

Will Peterson is the author of the novel, Crawl on Your Belly Like a Man, and books of poetry including Idaho Out There. He owns and operates the Walrus and Carpenter Bookstore in Pocatello and has hosted the Rocky Mountain Literary Festival for the last twenty-five years.

Ernest Hemingway’s first visit to Sun Valley was on September 20, 1939.  Gene Van Guilder and Steve Hannagan courted glamorous celebrity guests to promote the new Sun Valley Resort.  Lloyd Arnold and Van Guilder were among the very first friends that Ernest and Martha Gellhorn made. Hemingway was offered rooms at no cost for two years in the fall in exchange for some publicity photo shoots to help advertise Sun Valley.

His primary interest was to work on his book about the Spanish Civil War.  He was not interested in trout fishing – too time consuming, but would go upland bird hunting in the afternoons after disciplined early morning writing sessions in the Lodge’s Room 206.

 

 

 

 

Among the interesting locals they met at the Lodge the Arnolds, Tillie and Lloyd.  He stared at Tillie thinking she resembled his wife Pauline, to whom he had become estranged.  She was called Tillie because with her short haircut she looked like Tillie the Toiler, the cartoon character on the Second World War posters.  Her real name was Erma.

 

Ernest stayed three years in a row, then WWII hit and the Lodge closed to be a Naval Convalescent Hospital. Hemingway came West again in the fall of 1946 with new wife Mary Welsh. Traveling in Wyoming, Hemingway saved Mary’s life in Casper, Wyoming.  She had suffered a tubal pregnancy and her fallopian tubes ruptured causing her veins to collapse.  Hemingway cut into a vein to get plasma started.

 

 

 

Mary and Ernest also stayed at the Sun Valley Lodge, Room 206 when they visited. However, their stay became extended in 1946 and they rented McDonald’s Cabins and again in 1947 when  Hemingway worked on writing Garden of Eden.  Hemingway and Mary did not return to Sun Valley until the fall of 1958.  They rented the Heiss house September 15 – December l then rented the Whitcher house on 2nd Ave. for the rest of the winter.  In the spring of 1959 Hemingway bought his final home from Bob Topping. It sat on almost nineteen acres overlooking the Big Wood River.

Taylor Williams, a dear friend and hunting companion of Hemingway’s since 1939, died on February 18, 1959, at the age of 72.  He was

buried in Ketchum Cemetery in a plot that Ernest bought for him.  Hemingway was a pall bearer.  Hemingway spent most of 1959 in Spain doing research on bullfighting.  He and Mary came back to Sun Valley in 1959 for Christmas in their new house  by the Big Wood River. 

Ernest was struggling with his health and depression.  One of his doctors, George Saviers, checked him into the Mayo Clinic on November 30, 1960. Mary and Ernst Hemingway returned to Ketchum in the Spring 1961. Hemingway killed himself in his home shortly after with a shot gun on July 2.

The exhibit explores the history of the ice skating tradition at Sun Valley and some of the local luminaries who performed. The Sun Valley rink is legendary as an outdoor rink. The level and beauty of the skating that began in the early resort days laid the foundation for high entertainment, professional allure, and recreation. The Center for Regional History produced the exhibit “Rink Report: Ice Skating in Sun Valley,” from Museum collections and the Center’s archive collections. Included are objects, historic film footage, photographs, and memorabilia from ice shows. Nicole Potter is the curator of the exhibit.

Rugged Glamour tells the story of the early Sun Valley marketing machine, headed up by Steve Hannagan Associates. He was the one who came up with the name “Sun Valley” to promote the image that it is always sunny in Sun Valley even in the dead of winter. It was Averell Harriman, Chairman of Union Pacific Railroad, who hired Hannagan. Hannagan’s mission was to get the message out about the elegant new European style ski resort in the U.S. Curated by Kelley Moulton.

Rugged Glamour tells the story of the early Sun Valley marketing machine, headed up by Steve Hannagan Associates. He was the one who came up with the name “Sun Valley” to promote the image that it is always sunny in Sun Valley even in the dead of winter. It was Averell Harriman, Chairman of Union Pacific Railroad, who hired Hannagan. Hannagan’s mission was to get the message out about the elegant new European style ski resort in the U.S. Curated by Kelley Moulton.