Idaho's Hidden Gems

[Narrator] Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation, devoted to preserving the spirit of Idaho, from Ann Voilliqué and Louise Nelson, from Judy and Steve Meyer, the Friends of Idaho Public Television, The Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

[Music] [Narrator] The interesting thing about history is we can find evidence of it all around us.

Idaho has played host to the likes of pioneering explorers, mining booms and celebrated novelists.

We've even experienced our share of natural disasters.

The team at Idaho Experience is continually seeking out the spectacular and the culturally enriching.

In this episode, we've dug deep to uncover three historic nuggets.

An eclectic museum with a flavor all its own, a prolific artist who commissioned an architectural landmark and an influential photographer from the early 20th century.

Nuggets We're calling Idaho's Hidden Gems.

[Music] [Music] [Narrator] High above the Snake River in the Magic Valley sits an architectural masterpiece.

The only Frank Lloyd Wright designed building in Idaho, Teater’s Knoll.

Its story reflects the confluence of five bold personalities.

The country's premier architect, a famous Idaho artist and his wife, a mason with a wealth of talent and stone and a preservationist with a love of design.

Their aspirations combined to make Teater’s Knoll the unique gem it is today.

Its existence is due to the great success of an Idaho original Archie Boyd Teater, a prolific artist who painted magnificent landscapes and captured some of the rich history of our state.

[Lester Taylor] He's an extremely interesting and in a simple way, a very complicated individual.

And he was from an extremely poor family.

He never finished eighth grade.

His teacher kicked him out of the class for doodling rather than doing mathematics.

He wanted to paint.

And I don't think he thought at that time that, you know, he needed any more education than that.

He had no formal art instruction until winter of 1921, he had classes at the Portland Art Museum.

But he was painting prior to that time.

Self-taught.

Absolutely self-taught.

[Narrator] The subject of his paintings often drew upon the landscapes and the Western life he observed.

[Henry Whiting] Archie had spent time in the late teens and twenties in the Hagerman Valley.

And then he and his friend would fish for sturgeon in the snake River and salmon because salmon still came up into the Hagerman Valley.

And then they would haul the fish up to the miners in Haley and that's how, they made a living.

[Lester] As a result of his working along the Snake, he got a lot of material that he would paint about.

I don't think he saw himself as a historian, but his art.

There is a great deal of history, and especially history of the state of Idaho.

He painted at least two dozen mining scenes just from memory to record what it was like in those days.

And he also did a painting of what a logging camp looked like at that time.

Now, that's a marvelous record and that should be taken advantage of.

[Narrator] In the summertime, his restless nature would carry him and his paints from Boise by mule to the heights of the Sawtooths; mountains that stirred his passion for majestic landscapes.

Over the years his nomadic adventures would deliver him to the town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where breathtaking views of the Tetons would inspire a lifetime of work.

It was here that he'd meet Patricia Wilson, who would become his wife and help Archie grow into an artist of international renown.

[Lester] Patricia knew a lot about art.

She was an artist herself.

[Henry] Patricia was his sole gallery person as she was all his life.

[Lester] The view of Teater is that he was a painter of the Grand Tetons.

Well, yes, he certainly did that.

[Henry] He could paint the Tetons from memory.

And the story has it that somebody came into their little gallery in Jackson, and said, “Mrs.

Teater, we just love Archie’s work.

But it's just a little bit too expensive for us.” And she said, “Well, come back in the morning.

I'll have Archie paint you a smaller one tonight.” [Lester] He was enormously prolific.

He one time said that if he painted for a couple of more years that he would be over 10,000.

He'd be the most prolific painter of all time.

Now, whether that's right?

He was enormously prolific.

In the 20th century there was no Western painter like him.

[Henry] Archie was probably the most famous artist in Idaho [Narrator] Patricia's business acumen would capitalize on Archie's success and position them financially to commission a world class studio from one of the 20th century's greatest architects, Frank Lloyd Wright.

From Archie's years in the Hagerman Valley, he knew the ideal location for their studio, a place which came to be known as Teater’s Knoll.

[Henry] The reason it's called Teater’s Knoll is because it literally is a knoll.

Mrs. Farnsworth.

sold it to the Teaters for $125.

And she thought she had just bilked these crazy artists out of a lot of money.

But to her it was useless land because you couldn't raise cattle on it.

It's two acres in size and there is a 150 foot cliff on the river side And then the Snake River makes a big horseshoe bend in front of the site.

It's just one of the most beautiful sites in Idaho.

And Archie, with his art sensibility, recognized that right away.

And so they went to Wright with this site in mind.

[Narrator] By the time of the Teater Commission, Frank Lloyd Wright was the most famous architect in the world.

He pioneered the Prairie School movement and developed the concept of the Usonian home.

His dwellings sought harmony with nature.

And his plans for the Guggenheim Museum in New York would drive architecture toward a new frontier.

A studio designed by Wright could signal to the world that an artist of great mastery occupied the space.

[Henry] Clearly the reason that they went to Wright was because it was a marketing thing for Archie.

And virtually from mid-fifties onward, every piece of promotional copy that she would do would always say that Frank Lloyd Wright designed his studio.

[Narrator] Wright's design and the natural resources of the rugged desert landscape would inspire one young Mason from Oakley to produce a masterwork of his own.

[Henry] Really the great construction story of this place is the work of Kent Hale, which cannot have been easy because all the walls are angled at 60 and 120 degree angles.

And, it's a sloping site and the footing is step down and the walls are battered outwards below the window sill level.

So you have all this stuff enters into the calculation.

And it's truly some of the finest rock work in any Frank Lloyd Wright house.

[Kent Hale] Well, I had been working for a fella by the name of Fred Reed, a contractor from Twin Falls, He called me one day and said, “I just got a plan here I’d like you to look at.” And I went down and when I saw it was a Frank Lloyd Wright house, boy, I was became very enthusiastic.

Cause at the time he was my ideal.

I thought that no one quite like him here, right at his prime.

No way I was going to miss this job.

And so I did everything I could to get it.

[Brent Hale] He desired this job so much that he reduced his bid by about one third.

He felt like if Frank Lloyd Wright could endorse the stone, and promote his masonry, that would be his ticket to, you know, big time.

[Henry] He knew from his youth they had this Oakley Stone that was more beautiful than any rock he had seen.

And at that point, he had even built this little fireplace for his parents outside their family home.

[Brent] He was asked by his father to build this fireplace in honor his grandfather It's been in use for 75 years and I still love it.

I love to sit here and have a fire.

And it's pretty much exactly how it was when he completed it.

And this is his first attempt at anything significant out of Oakley Stones.

[Narrator] As with many of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs, the plans called for locally sourced material.

[Henry] The original floor plan calls for the rock work to look like Fallingwater, the famous house over the waterfall in Pennsylvania.

Fallingwater is built of sandstone And so that's what Wright was asking for was a horizontally laid rock [Kent] And so when I saw that in the specifications, I looked around here and and found where it came out natural.

[Brent] So back in the late forties, early fifties as he was having dreams of becoming a stonemason and getting into the stone industry, he came up here looking for the perfect stone, and he came across this area.

And this is where all of the stone for Teater’s came from.

And this is a great example of what he was looking for.

It's been in the weather for probably tens of thousands of years.

So the edges are softer.

And it's got some lichen on it And this one is another great example of maybe one that would be properly sized.

This one hasn't been on the surface as long, but this is pretty much the shape that he was looking for.

[Henry] Yeah.

[Brent] And there was limited supply of it.

And he picked up probably every bit of stone that had the characteristics that he was looking for to put in Teater’s Knoll.

It makes Teater’s Knoll all that much more unique and special - [Henry] Yeah.

[Brent] because that that particular stone no longer exists.

[Henry] Yeah.

[Narrator] Kent Hale’s selection of Oakley Stone would prove to be the spark to an industry that today infuses an estimated $250 million dollars annually into the local economy.

[Henry] This was the first major building that had ever been done in Oakley Stone.

[Brent] You can look at the prow and just see how how straight it is.

It's a 60 degree angle.

I just.

I'm amazed that he was able to make it look so straight.

It doesn't bow.

It doesn't bend.

He did everything perfectly.

But if you look closely, it's also quite jagged.

[Henry] Yeah.

But as a whole, it reads as a straight line.

Yeah.

[Brent] Beautiful.

[Narrator] The surface rock Kent gathered for the studio is referred to as “Float Stone”.

Laying it in harmony with Wright’s design would be just one of many challenges he faced.

[Henry] you know, this was Kent's first project, really.

Which is quite amazing.

But Patricia thought that it wasn't proceeding fast enough.

And she fired Kent with the building about two thirds finished.

[Brent] She felt like he wasn't doing a very good job.

She made some disparaging comments to a local newspaper.

[Kent] They sent in a .

.

.

the little article that said they were a little bit delayed in constructing their building because they had to teach the stonemason how to lay stone.

This was his last straw as far as I was concerned.

[Brent] Ultimately he couldn't take it much longer.

She sued him for leaving the job.

He countersued for nonpayment.

He won the lawsuit, but ended up getting 1/10th of what he bid on the job.

So $700 dollars of the $7000.

[Henry] He didn't get to finish the project.

And some of the work here is really, really bad.

This is one of the most interesting parts of the whole studio, is because right here you see Kent Hale’s original work below the level of the window sill.

And then above the windowsill is some other mason’s work.

This is all composed order and this is chaos.

[Brent] Chaos.

[Henry] There's no relation between the parts.

[Brent] Yeah.

This would have been one that he left on the mountain.

[Henry] (Laughs) Okay!

[Brent] It's hard for me to look at it, Being someone who appreciates my father's work.

[Henry] Yeah.

[Brent] I think, uh, Mrs. Teater might have robbed the world of something special.

[Henry] Yeah.

[Brent] If she'd allowed my father to complete the job.

[Henry] Yes.

[Narrator] One of the signature features Kent Hale did complete before being released from the project was the chimney.

This one built to a grand scale.

[Henry] The rock work that would be looked at more than any other place in the whole studio would be this.

And so here on the interior, you see lichen.

And I love to point this out to people that that's what is it?

70 years ago that was put there.

And that lichen is still alive and growing.

[Brent] My, my father was an artist.

[Henry] Yes, he was.

He was.

[Narrator] Once construction was complete, the Teaters used the studio seasonally, splitting their time between Jackson Hole and Hagerman.

In their later years they gave generously to causes dear to them.

They started the Archie B. Teater Fund for Handicapped Children and supported important medical programs at the Mayo Clinic.

Their nomadic spirit took them on adventures around the world.

Archie collected images from exotic locations and brought them to life on his canvas back home.

The studio would prove to be a sanctuary for the rest of their creative lives.

[Henry] I have heard from friends of the Teaters that his most creative work was done here at the studio.

[Narrator] Archie Boyd Teater died in 1978.

But his spirit is alive and well in Hagerman, where the Historical Society purchased a new home that will display some of the 600 Teater paintings they have in their collection.

[Darlene Nemnich] We are so excited about this new building.

This is going to be the Teater Room.

And in it, we have Archie's easel.

And we put here one of my favorite of Archie's paintings.

It is of the Tetons.

And it was part of the collection that we got from the Idaho Community Foundation.

So, um, we're quite pleased to have that in our room.

[Narrator] Patricia moved to California after Archie's death and passed away in 1981.

The studio was abandoned and left to the Quaker Church.

Its condition deteriorated until it was in a state of ruin.

[Henry] you know, it looked kind of like a prison camp.

There was a chain link fence with three strands of barbed wire.

It really looked pretty bad.

In any case, I was really intrigued.

I started to conceive in my mind, this would really be a great way to learn hands on about Frank Lloyd Wright, would be to buy this place and to restore it.

[Narrator] It was his uncle, Alden B. Dow, a student of Wright’s, who gave Henry the confidence to take on the project.

[Henry] So it's always been really important to me that the first person I asked about this was my uncle.

He said, “Henry, I think that's really a good idea that you do that for your life.” And he says, “As a matter of fact, I think that is such a good idea that if I were your father, I would loan you the money make sure that you did it.” And then he paused for a second, he said, “But then it wouldn't mean as much.” And he was, he was telling me that I had to take responsibility for it.

And that's been like one of the most important things ever said to me in my life.

it's just one of these things that was just meant to happen.

[Narrator] After he purchased the property in 1982, his first order of business was to restore relations with Kent Hale.

[Brent] Henry had a good enough eye to see that the original stonework was perfect, beautiful.

And so he reached out to my father.

There was still some hard feelings about the whole Teater’s Knoll and Henry basically provided redemption for that mess that he went through in the fifties.

I think he was really proud of it.

I think he recognized that it was pretty much his showcase.

It was the most significant job that he'd ever done.

[Narrator] Henry's preservation of the studio has ensured that Frank Lloyd Wright's legacy lives on in the Hagerman Valley, where upon occasion he opens his private home to tours organized by local nonprofits, giving tourists an opportunity to see firsthand the mastery of Mason Kent Hale and experience the breadth of Wright's creative space that is Teater’s Knoll.

[Applause] [Henry] Well, thank, thank you all for coming.

I appreciate you being here.

You can't tell from here, but you're about to experience one of the most beautiful sights in the whole state.

[Carrie Apple Gate: Docent] It's just fascinating.

And I can see why people are getting emotional as soon as they come around the corner.

[Sarah Del Grande: Tourist] It's all situated so that every window you look out you have this amazing view of the river.

It's just gorgeous.

[Nola Nelson: Tourist] I love how it definitely feels like an artist lives in the studio.

[Doug Stan: Docent] Right.

[Jennifer Pisano:Docent] Mm-hmm.

[Ann Debolt: Tourist] I think it is incredible.

I love everything here.

The rock, the view.

I mean, it's.

I'm so happy I finally was able to come on a tour here.

[Brittney Scigliano] To be able to showcase the architecture and the history of a private home, and then to have someone like Henry, who is a amazing steward of this home, it's a big deal for preservation.

[Henry] Frank Lloyd Wright homeowners always talk about how they see something new every day in their house.

And I would say that 90% of the time it’s the relationship with the architecture to nature.

At this point in my life, I spend a lot of times observing that.

I have the time to watch the sun gradually come into the main studio room and then the leaves are dancing on the floor and as the sun goes down, the light goes deeper and deeper into the main room.

You get this amazing feeling of harmony.

It doesn't require a manifesto to explain what's going on or anything.

It's just visceral.

you can just feel it.

It really is like a chapel.

It is a chapel to creativity and creativity for an artist.

[Jennifer Hills] Clarence Bisbee was young man growing up in Nebraska.

I believe he was the youngest in his family.

I think he was interested from an early age, at least in magic.

And maybe that sort of boosted an interest in photography as he got a little older.

And he ended up close to the age of 30 going to photography school in Illinois.

And there he met a young man named Charles Diehl, who in 1904 came out west and started a newspaper out here in the new town of Twin Falls, Idaho.

And he convinced his buddy Clarence to come out and see for himself what this area was like.

[Train Whistle] So, I believe Clarence hopped on a train and got as far as Omaha.

There he supposedly flipped a coin to see if he was going to hop on the next train to Texas or the one that was heading for Shoshone, Idaho.

Whether it was heads or tails, it came out for Shoshone.

He came out here and caught the stage into Twin.

At that time there was no bridge on the Snake River Canyon.

[Music] Bisbee came out, in 1906, probably at the behest of Diehl, because they realized that this was a new opportunity.

[Jim Gentry] In fact, the Twin Falls Land and Water Company had just completed the Milner Dam, so the water was being irrigated in 1905.

So Bisbee gets here in 1906.

Obviously part of what The Twin Falls Land and Water Company wanted to do was to demonstrate that they were open for business, that good things were happening.

[Narrator] And indeed they were.

thanks to Congress passing the Carey Act.

Also known as The Federal Desert Land Act, it helped pave the way for Idaho’s canal system.

Potential homesteaders flocked to the area in droves, looking for good deals on land.

[Jennifer] The Twin Falls Land and Water Company was going to need to sell this land.

And one of the ways they could sell it it was through photography.

[Narrator] That was music to the ears of Clarence Bisbee.

So he rolled up his sleeves and he went to work.

[Jennifer] His first studio was a tent.

I think his quote is that he took a picture of every ditch and head gate it in the region.

And he was taking pictures of the agriculture and the beginnings of the town and anything that he thought might attract people.

[Narrator] But like any entrepreneur starting out, it took a little time for things to click.

[Music] [Jennifer] He wasn't actually hired officially by the canal company at that time.

Later he was officially hired as the photographer for the North Side Canal Company Project.

But in the early days, he was just taking pictures and then seeing if he could pass those along.

[Narrator] Then Bisbee had an idea.

Why not offer up his photos to be used in marketing brochures?

[Jennifer] Clarence lucked out because he wasn't necessarily the first photographer in Twin Falls, but he was one of the first to be here and sort of take advantage of the opportunity of these brochures.

And I think he did fairly well a few years.

He would get requests for up to 1400 pictures a month from some of these businesses and promoters back east.

And then into the 1910’s he was selling postcards.

in a year, I think he could sell about 50,000 postcards.

[Narrator] By that time, Bisbee had married Jesse Robinson.

Their relationship was close in marriage and in business.

[Jennifer] We don't know a ton about Clarence Bisbee or his wife Jessie Bisbee’s early lives.

But we do believe that they met or knew each other, at least least in Nebraska.

She was about nine years younger than Bisbee was.

They were married in 1910.

And when he would traipse his 50 to 60 pounds of negatives and cameras and other photography equipment around, she was right there with him.

But she's a writer, she's a poet, and so she turns things around a little bit and starts to appeal to a different aesthetic, especially as they turn to some of the studio photography.

And in fact, when he moves his studio into one of the buildings, he advertises it as the Bisbee Electric Studio because now he can use lighting to light his subjects and also to run some of his equipment especially for processing photos.

But by the 19 teens, we're starting to see that a lot of land is being sold or now it's it's more of an investment instead of people coming out west.

There's not the high interest in promotion as you saw before.

Eventually other photographers moved into the area.

And I think there was kind of a saturation in the market.

The Bisbee’s also started to invest in their own parcels of land.

And in fact, I believe they owned 11 or 12 lots in and around our area as well as I think there were a couple of those lots that were in Nevada.

And so into the 1920s, in the late 1920s, we starting to see that they might have been sort of land rich, but now they were very cash poor.

[Music] Of course you get the depression on top of that.

Then you get foreclosures and you get the people asking for money.

As she gets a little bit older, you're starting to see the worries of the money coming in.

She starts to document, if not on a daily basis, on at least a weekly and even on a monthly basis how much they owe.

And you can tell that that is uppermost in her mind at some point.

Jessie Bisbee died in June of 1936.

She had been ill for some time.

Toward the end of her life her worries were starting to overwhelm her a little bit.

I don't know that that was a direct cause, definitely of her death, but I think it probably didn't help while she was so ill. [Narrator] Jesse's illness and subsequent death seemed to drain some of the life out of Clarence.

[Jennifer] When Jessie passes, I think Clarence is virtually retired.

And in 1937 or 38, he is promoting a new photographer that's in the area that's coming in and running now, the Bisbee studio.

And by 39 or 40, the studio is out of his hands.

I think that he was probably as destitute as you could be in those days, unfortunately.

[Narrator] But in his heyday, Clarence Bisbee and his camera seemed to be just about everywhere.

[Jennifer] If there was a parade he was there.

If it was the opening of staged version of Mikado he was there.

There’s some great moments that he captured on film that would have never been captured without him.

One of my favorite pictures is when World War One was over.

And and he must be standing on the courthouse steps of the crowd that was out there to celebrate Armistice Day.

I think that's incredible.

When Bisbee passes away in 1954, still miraculously he has most of his glass plate negatives, if not all.

and they were just all in really good shape.

And there were were about 2200 to 2500.

[Narrator] Gus Keller, DeWitt Young and Dr. Wallace Bond bought the collection from Bisbee's heirs for 1500 dollars and donated it to the Twin Falls County Museum.

The collection eventually found its way to the Twin Falls Public Library.

[Jennifer] And then in 2000, we started a grant with Blip Printers to digitize the entire collection.

So this is a picture from when William Jennings Bryan was here speaking in Twin.

And this is at the Perrine Hotel.

And the resolution is so great that we can zoom in quite a bit.

We can see Bryan there talking.

And you can see beside him I.B.

Perrine and Robert McCollum, who's with the Twin Falls Land and Water Company.

And somebody has fallen asleep, apparently.

[Narrator] As far as Jim Gentry can remember, this is the first time he'd seen Bisbee's originals.

[Jim] That is quite a picture.

[Jennifer] Isn't that one fun?

That’s Bisbee himself standing down there.

[Narrator] Jim was hired to interpret the photos in the early eighties.

But he worked with slides, not the glass plate negatives.

[Music] [Jim] The thing that really strikes me about Bisbee, he was showing life as it was taking place at that time.

And that life is very interesting in terms of interpreting his meaning.

What Bisbee saw is what you and I would want to show.

If you lived in Twin Falls and you have visitors, where do you want to take them?

You want to take them to Shoshone Falls.

You want to take them to the Twin Falls, You want to take them to the Perrine Coulee.

But he was also looking at how people made their livelihoods.

So lots of pictures showing harvesting of crops.

And of course, he was always showing the big crops, the success stories.

He is interpreting and trying to make this area appealing to you as a potential investor or a purchaser of land.

[Jennifer] But I also think that he was very interested in art.

And later we see that definitely in the motto that he chose to etch at the top of his studio, which is life and art are one.

And I think that he thought that everything that he was doing was part of that artistry.

And then, of course, you've got photos of the people and, he’s taking pictures of his neighbors and people that he comes across all the time.

And I think that kind of shows as well that he had a connection, into this community, [Narrator] Clarence Bisbee's role in promoting the Twin Falls area during the early 20th century cannot be overstated.

Not only have his photos stood the test of time, but like the photographer himself, they are nothing short of iconic.

[Jennifer] And they are very well preserved.

Now the glass plate negatives just live in some drawers and are kept quiet and dark and safe.

And we get to enjoy photos with another generation.

[Music] [Narrator] About the last thing you'd expect to see outside of Grand View, Idaho, is a sign for a museum.

But Lawson’s Legacy Museum is another one of Idaho's hidden gems.

[Ronalee Linsenmann] Oh, it’s the most glorious hidden gem.

I think it’s the most unique museum I've ever gone to in my life.

And I've gone to a lot of them.

[Narrator] Like many first time visitors, Ronalee Linsenmann happened upon the museum by chance.

[Ronalee] Years ago I had to go to a funeral in Grand View.

So I went to the funeral, and as I was driving by, I saw this wonderful sign, a museum, which I'm addicted to museums.

So, I pulled over on my way home and came in and started looking around.

[Narrator] What she found was a mosaic of western artifacts and memorabilia.

[Ronalee] It's all just so intriguing because it's just so overwhelming with everything.

[Narrator] A young girl once called the museum the Smithsonian of Idaho.

As you might imagine, Ronalee would agree.

[Ronalee] Oh, my golly, I do.

If I could vote on anything to be number one, this would be the number one hidden gem.

[Music Change] [Narrator] The property was originally named Emu-Z-Um.

But more on that in a moment.

To understand how it came to be, you need to know a bit about Jack Lawson.

Jack was an avid collector from the time he was a little bot boy until the day he died.

[Belva Lawson] He collected arrowheads and bottles and pocket knives, just as a young kid.

Then he decided that wasn't enough.

[Narrator] So, one day in his sixties he asked his wife Belva for a favor.

[Belva] If he could put his old machinery up the road.

And I said, yeah, if you’ll build me a little western town to put some of your stuff.

That was it.

We just started out with a few buildings, and when we’d find more stuff in the shed then we’d build another building.

A little bit at a time it just grew.

And people told by word of mouth it was a place to go.

So, we decided we couldn’t do it for just letting them come.

[Narrator] So they started charging folks the little old western town they dubbed the Emu-Z-Um.

The name was perfect.

After all, they had hundreds of the birds.

The emu craze eventually fell flat.

But the museum took flight.

And Jack kept on collecting more stuff.

[Belva] He always said he was cheap, and he bought boxes of stuff for a dollar.

There’s lots of things he brought home that I didn’t know what we were going to do with it.

But it turned out to be better than the last one.

So, you never know til you start.

[Narrator] The museum eventually grew to 78 rooms, and so did its Western persona.

It’s almost as if if you've walked on to a movie set.

[Music] Pretty much every western town had a general store.

The museum is no different.

Its shelves are stocked with American favorites.

There's a shed with horse drawn wagons, a wall of doorknobs, and a massive collection of antique bottles.

Not long after they opened, Jack and Belva dug deep into their life savings to buy the contents of another southern Idaho museum.

[Belva] We knew the three girls that inherited the Silver City Museum.

And they came here one day.

We had only been open a year.

And they came down and asked if we would be interested in buying, and if we were, they would like to have it relocated.

So, we went up to look at it.

And I told Jack it was a lot of money, and maybe we shouldn't do this.

Jack says, you wnat a new pickup or you want Silver City stuff?

I said, whatever you want dear.

[Music] [Narrator] It's very easy to lose track of time here.

There's just so much to absorb.

[Music] There's a train room with a miniature layout.

But there are also rows and rows of model cars.

Aside from the path down the middle, the doll room is filled from wall to wall.

[Music] These American classics grab your attention the minute you walk through the door.

It’s clear that Jack was fascinated by all things historical.

But rocks were his true passion.

He spent countless hours right here.

[Belva] 24 hours a day that polisher run.

There’s lots of rocks in there If somebody likes rocks, [Narrator] Jack may have been the museum’s primary collector, but its look and feel are thanks to Belva.

Think of her as a place for everything and everything in its place kind of person.

[Ronalee] And you see it all through this place, is it’s telling a story.

The different parts and pieces all put together.

[Belva] If you love something it isn't hard to do.

You just think of it in the middle of the night, and think of what do you want to do the next day?

Just say, Jack, you know what I was thinking in the night?

He always said, I don't want to hear it.

But he loved it, and he loved what I did.

So, we did it together.

[Narrator] Few things embody fifties American culture more than the soda fountain.

that’s where we chose to interview Belva.

[Belva] This is when we grew up.

So it's, it’s special to us.

Bruneau and Grand View.

It was great growing up in Grand View.

And were kind of rivals with Bruneau, but that didn’t make any difference.

[Narrator] You see, Belva was a Grand View Devils cheerleader, and Jack played sports for the Bruneau Bobcats.

They never dated anyone else, got married and spent nearly three decades sharing their little slice of heaven with others.

[Music] [Museum Visitor] That's a milking machine.

[Narrator] Thousands of people have come here from all over the world.

But one prominent Idahoan helped Ronalee get Jack and Belva an Idaho Historical Society Esto Perpetua Award in 2021.

[Belva] This one lady was always, This one lady was always, every room she went in she was surprised and so tickled about how everything looked, and just bragged on everything.

And I thought, she's really a nice lady.

[Ronalee] Here she was hosting the governor’s wife and she had no idea.

When I nominated them for Esto Perpetua I did contact the governor’s wife and asked if she would write a little recommendation because of that fun little adventure she’d had out here.

And I thought that was pretty valuable to our effort.

[Narrator] Jack passed away not long after they received the award, and Belva’s family convinced her to move on.

But it took time to sell because Belva was looking for the right buyers.

Then along came the Florians.

[Belva] They came here and looked at it and said we’ve always wanted something like this.

And that was all it took.

My dream come true.

[Jessica and Eddie Florian] I think we were both blown away.

Right after we peeked through all the buildings and stuff, and then we got back in the car, we were both, looked at each other, and we were like you know, this place is amazing.

And wouldn’t this be wonderful to live here?

When Jack passed away he wanted her to keep it going and keep it alive.

And she worked her butt off for a whole year afterwards.

And she knew she couldn’t do it by herself.

But she didn’t want to see it go.

I mean, this is their life.

This is what they worked hard to do.

And so she wanted someone to take it and to continue it.

And so that's why we were like, you know, this has to be called Lawson's Legacy, because this is their legacy, even thought we’re taking it over and working it.

Yeah, and the first time I told her we was going to name it Lawson’s Legacy she said, you don't have to do that.

And I was like.

You're going to make me cry.

I said, you’re the one that build it, not the Florians.

I said, we’re just going to run it.

[Narrator] So, the Florians have taken the have taken the reins and are plowing ahead with with their new lives.

[Jessica] You’ll have to come back then.

[Narrator] Jessica used to be a public school teacher.

Now she’s hosting monthly history lessons with Idaho kids.

[Jessica] Okay, so the red light meant stop.

How about the green light?

Over there.

Go, you’re right.

[Narrator] As for Eddie?

Well, he's forever repairing and remodeling.

[Jessica] He's like Jack.

She said that Jack, you know, loved staying here and working in the area.

And he's the same way.

Every morning when he's out there, he says, I just love this.

This just isn't work to me.

And it's true.

[Narrator] The museum may have a new name, and it may be down to its last emu.

But the Florians want the former Emu-Z-Um to stay pretty much as it’s always been, a peaceful place to explore Idaho history in a little old western town they now call home.

[Eddie] That's one of my selling factors too, on buying this place.

One time we was here when we was still thinking about it.

And there was a reunion going on, And the people here were just so happy.

So, you forget about all the weird stuff going on, and everything in our world and country.

And your mind just relaxes, and you just have a good day.

And everybody that’s here, I've never seen anybody mad.

In fact, we even put that in our ad, if they make it halfway through and hey don't like it, we’ll give them half their money back and they can leave.

[Jessica] We want Jack to be looking down and smiling, going good job Belva.

You found the right ones.

[Laugh] [Music] [Narrator] Idaho Experience is made possible with funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation, devoted to preserving the spirit of Idaho, from Ann Voilliqué and Louise Nelson, from Judy and Steve Meyer, the Friends of Idaho Public Television, The Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.