Green River tour for Historical Society

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The Emery County Historical Society as part of the Utah Historic Preservation Month traveled to Historic Green River for a tour. Members of the Emery County Historic Preservation Commission accompanied them. In Green River the group visited the John Wesley Powell Museum displays and the Museum archives. Char Upton met them for a tour of the Museum.
Orion Stand-Gravois welcomed the group to the Green River Archives at the John Wesley Powell Museum and stated that he is a yearlong resident of Green River. He works at an AmeriCorps job out of the Epicenter, a newly renovated building, which is a community resource Center for the town.
Orion said Green River is very lucky to have JoAnne Chandler doing the job of putting together an archive for a town this size.
JoAnne Chandler the Museum archivist with the help of Orion Stand-Gravois from the Epicenter presented a video history of Green River. She said, In 2005, Emery County gave the Green River Museum $5,000 to start the Green River archives. JoAnne was hired to work full-time, entering information into the Museum computer. She has recently been scanning old historic photographs and written histories and storing them on discs for future generations.
The oldest item in the archive is older than the dinosaurs. It is a petrified sponge.
JoAnne tries to preserve the history of the people, the events of not only the town of Green River, but also the Gunnison Valley and the Colorado Plateau River system. She preserves family histories, their papers and photographs.
The Green River veterans list in the archives has increased from 300 to nearly 600 names and includes several family histories.
JoAnne has many books about the businesses of Green River along with a good collection of Native American history.
The archive has more than 7,000 photographs in the computer and a collection of at least 12,075 that are not yet in the computer. She estimates her collection of photographs in the archives is more than 20,000.
The Old Spanish Trail it is believed crossed the Green River 2.1 miles north of Green River near where the Hastings Ranch and the Green River Diversion dam are located.
JoAnne Chandler said Green River has had a roller coaster economy since its history began. Green River started off with a ferry for people with wagons wanting to cross the river. Then the railroads came in and Green River boomed a little. Next came a flood and the railroad decided to take the roundhouse and those jobs to Helper. We have had the cattlemen, the horsemen, the sheep men and we have had vanadium and uranium. In the 1950s, when uranium was popular Green River boomed.
Then the missile launch complex was built. That missile base increased the population of Green River for a time. In the 1980s Green River again lost population. Green River goes up and down with the economy.
Green River has had several railroad depots over the years. The old hardware store and the drugstore are still on Broadway. The Green River drugstore was ran by the first female pharmacist in this part of Utah. The river has flooded and changed course several times over the years.
A hand-drawn map in the book of the History of Green River shows the locations of the Green River businesses in 1917.
In 1985, the Opera House burned and several homes were destroyed at that time including JoAnne Chandler’s.
JoAnne then pointed out the Green River Airport, the Missile Base Valley and where the Old Spanish Trail crossed the Green River.
In the winter of 1850 John William Gunnison traveled through Green River making an expedition and survey through the mountains to California for the railroad. Indians later killed Gunnison near Richfield. JoAnne pointed out Gunnison Butte and several other landmarks along the road to Hastings Ranch.
JoAnne mentioned the names and histories of some the river explorers and river runners.
When the railroad came through Green River, they built the Palmer House a hotel for travelers. In those days there were no dining cars or sleeping cars. According to JoAnne the Palmer House was a beautiful building.
When the railroad came they had Chinese laborers in the construction crew. Along Broadway Street is a hill where the Chinese railroad workers lived.
JoAnne took the Historical Society on a tour of the old Hastings Ranch beside the Green River. The old ranch home has not been occupied for several years and is in a sad state of decay.
The broken very large wooden water wheel, in a state of decay, illustrated how water had been taken from the river, put into a pipe system, to irrigate the fields. Trees and logs floating down the river in the spring floods damaged this old wooden water wheel.
A newer steel water wheel has replaced the wooden one. It is placed just below the Green River Diversion Dam. This diversion dam is scheduled to be replaced during the winter of 2015 and provide a way for boats to go through the dam.
JoAnne then took the group on a tour down Broadway, which was once the Main street of Green River. Broadway Street now has many vacant lots where historic buildings once stood. She told of the many businesses that had occupied the various buildings or lots.
She explained the historic Midland Hotel on Broadway has had several owners and is currently owned by a Hollywood film company filming movies in the area.
That afternoon the group adjourned to Ray’s Tavern on Broadway to try Ray’s famous hamburger and fries lunch before going home.