Historical Commission Agenda and Packet 2021 07 21

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of the Tomeo House, which at 626 square feet is a modest -sized home typical of many houses in Louisville in the early 1900s. The Museum's mission statement is "Be a Part of the Story! Connect and Share in the Heart of Louisville." Its 2017 Master Plan is on the Museum website. The Museum staff members manage collections, exhibits, a volunteer program, an oral history program, outreach activities, and a membership program, and conduct research for its quarterly publication, The Louisville Historian, as well as for programs and upon request for City staff and members of the public. Visitors to the Museum campus, who include school groups and who numbered 5,038 in 2019, are invited to tour three historic buildings located on the site. The Museum is normally open five days a week and for special events. In -person activities, school outreach, and digital offerings about Louisville history on the Museum's YouTube channel are additional ways in which the Museum engages with people of all ages about local history. The addition of the Cabins to be under the management of the Museum marks the first time that the Museum division will oversee a separate property in addition to the structures at 1001 Main St. In order to keep an accurate count of yearly visitors to the Louisville Museum facilities, the staff will keep track of the numbers of visitors to the Cabins and will combine them with the statistics on visitors to the Museum campus. The purpose of this interpretive Plan is to set forth how the Museum can best tell the Cabins' story to visitors and engage the community through the Cabins after the buildings have been rehabilitated and returned to their neighborhood, to City property on Lee Ave. near their original location. However, this plan is being written before the members of the Museum staff have had an opportunity to step into the empty buildings and begin to assess the interior and exterior spaces. There will inevitable be some challenges and opportunities for the staff members to discuss and work through as they plan to start to offer tours of the Cabins to the public and plan programming at the location, which may be phased in. For these reasons, a projected opening date has not been set, but is being planned to take place in 2022. Section 2: Background and Historical Context Louisville, Colorado was established as a coal mining town in 1878. For decades, most of its residents lived very modestly. Many residents emigrated from other countries. While some families came and stayed, other families or single people (typically miners) lived in the community for much shorter times, passing through and then leaving to seek other opportunities. Newspaper articles and editorials, ' along with residents stories, tell us that when the last coal mines were closing in the 1940s This 1940s aerial view from Boulder's Carnegie Library for Local History shows the cabin complex (circled) on Lee Ave. and early 1950s, many Louisville residents felt to the west of Miners Field. as though the modern world was leaving their town behind. Louisville still had unpaved streets and people were still using outhouses instead of indoor bathrooms. Essentially, the town lacked funding for critical infrastructure that people in many other towns by that time took for granted. Civic leaders and business leaders had to organize themselves and residents to come up with 2