Sunday and the end of another Week in the Smith Sherlock Company Store

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Poster in the Smith Sherlock Company Store, South Pass City, Wyoming. 
 
Poster in the Smith Sherlock Company Store.

I was cool again this morning. Gator and I met up at 8:00 to take sarsaparilla to the Miner's Exchange Saloon and then road back to the office.

I worked this morning in the archives inventorying files for eventual digitization. Its simple, quiet, but not particularly exciting. I listened to a couple of podcasts while I did this, so the time passed by quickly enough.

At noon, I opened the Smith Sherlock Company Store. People came by soon after I opened and the flow was steady until around 2:30, when things slowed down. I spent a lot of my free time organizing the invoices I have been taking photos of and then cleaning up temporary work files. I still have a bit of that to do, but it is mindless work.

In the early afternoon, I had a cyclist come though the store. He has evidently been riding alone for some time because he wanted to talk, mostly about growing up in tobacco country and his addictions to various forms of tobacco. A family came in and I wondered over to tell about the store and its history. I showed the kids a few things and, before I finished, the cyclist had moved on to another building.  

Today was one of the days on which I observed a behavior that I really don't understand. The site has a few gold pans set out by Willow Creek and soil from a nearby prospecting site, Visitors are encouraged to pan for gold. There isn't much gold in this material and what there is consists of very small flakes. That's the nature of gold deposits in this area. Anyway, when I first got to the store, I noticed a couple, man and woman, in their 30's along the creek. The woman was sitting in a lawn chair, under an umbrella, reading a book. The man was panning for gold. They took a short break for lunch, then he went back at it until well past 3 PM. For a few (literally) flakes of gold? I see this a few times each summer and am always amused- I guess it is the same gold fever that first attracted miners to South Pass City 160 years ago.

Forty people and one dog came through today and I closed the store at 4:00. 

The off to the trailer to relax and prepare dinner. Reading and research after dinner. 

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