Mining for facts and more

It's already September and the Cowboy Reunion is only a month away! The museum staff has been hard at work preparing for this event. In addition to putting together an exhibit to reflect our cowboy heritage, they will also be hosting a reception on Friday, October 23, 2009, from 4:00pm to 6:00pm. We strongly encourage anyone who is interested to come and join us!

Behind the scenes I have still been assisting Nellie Price, our museum educator, to gather accurate historical information for the game Las Vegas Alive! Currently I am looking over area census reports covering the decades from 1860 through 1880 to compile a list of occupations that are not already on our list. Any ethnicity other than white is also being noted. We need to make the game as historically accurate as possible for each time period. This has proven to be a greater challenge than we anticipated.

I have not been able to locate the 1880 census report for San Miguel County. I am beginning to wonder if it exists at all. It is important for our purposes because there was a large migration of people of all backgrounds and occupations that came to the area after the arrival of the railroad. In addition to mining through census enumerations, we are also compiling a list of artifacts and props for each student, or character, to use during the game. This project is not only a lot of fun, but I am learning very interesting things about this area. I can't wait to see the final product!

Laura M. Gonzales
History Consultant
Las Vegas City Museum