Museum provides look at Grant County's past

EPHRATA - Grant County residents had a chance to get a look at the county's past at the annual Pioneer Day sponsored by the Grant County Museum Sept. 28.

The museum's extensive village was open to visitors, the blacksmith shop and one room school, Ephrata's first Catholic Church. The general store was open, so was the barbershop, jail, beauty parlor, meat market, doctor's office, dress shop and more. "It all here from the very beginning," said museum director Pat Witham.

Volunteers in each building answered questions, the blacksmith forge was fired up and volunteers from the Grant County Sheriff's Posse robbed the bank regularly. But the robbers came to no good end, shot down by the posse every time.

The museum sponsors two community events each year, Witham said. It's about passing on the lessons learned through experience, she said. "You can't have a future if you don't have a past. We are what we are today because of the people that came before us."

The museum is a popular stop for school children from throughout the state, Witham said. "They come from Seattle, they come from all over."

The kids are especially impressed with the method of staying warm in early Grant County, in an era of wood-burning stoves with few trees around. "They cannot understand why anyone would use cow chips for fuel."

Pioneer Day featured shootouts in the street and the bank robberies, but the robbers kept coming back to life and trying again. Actually those robbers have been trying to rob that bank every Pioneer Day for about a decade, said Ron Tolison, Moses Lake.

Alas, they were unsuccessful every time. Tolison and his partner in crime Phil Bloom were gunned down by Debbie Tolison and Diana Bloom, all volunteers with the sheriff's posse.

The posse also supervised the stick horse races, held on Main Street in the museum town.