Water is Wyomings Gold: Better Living through Reclamation

January 31 – May 16, 2015

Boyle Gallery

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The availability of water has been a factor in Western settlement patterns since the first waves of migration to the West. And, although 150 years have passed since Wyoming’s first major wave of settlement, water and infrastructure are still key determinants in where state residents live, cultivate, and recreate. Through photographs and maps from the American Heritage Center, the exhibit Water is Wyoming’s Gold: Better Living through Reclamation explores the history of the Bureau of Reclamation’s role in Wyoming through the lens of industry as well as tourism and recreation, illustrating the truth in the slogan of the Wyoming Reclamation Association—that water is indeed “Wyoming’s Gold.”

 

• Presented by the American Heritage Center

 

Images:

Left: Fishing at Buffalo Bill Dam, near Cody, Wyoming, ca. late 1940s. Joseph C. O’Mahoney papers, AHC Collections

 

Right: Undated cyanotype of a log dam from a photograph album of Wyoming irrigation works. Elwood Mead Papers, AHC Collections