Kanarraville, UT; April 27 – June 9,
2014
We headed out to the Parowan Cemetery,
Petroglyphs, and Heritage Park this morning, but stopped at the
Frontier Homestead Park for information. We never got to Parowan
today. The Frontier Homestead was so interesting and had so many
hands-on learning activities for kids (and adults) that it must be a
local favorite.
The Frontier Homestead celebrates Cedar
City's history, which began when iron was discovered and Brigham
Young called on some of the Brothers to mine the iron ore and build a
new town, now called Cedar City.
We were told when we arrived that we
needed an hour to see everything and it took us two and a half hours,
which was no surprise since we like to read the signs, ask questions,
and talk about what we remember seeing as kids.
We started out inside the building
where an old Ford Model A resided along with various carriages,
surreys, a couple of stagecoaches, a dairy delivery truck, and a
hearse. There were also milk-cream separators, a couple of platen
presses, a big paper cutter, a huge stapler, two weaving looms, and
some artwork by local artists. There was also a Graphotype, used from
October 1928 to January 1966 to make military dog tags and other
metal tags and cards – something I had never seen before.
Outside, there are a number of hands-on
areas: gold panning, washing clothes in wash tub with a plunger-like
tool for an agitator, roping cattle, and building a cabin. In
addition, we saw a couple of original houses, lots of old farm
equipment, a sawmill, palisade, an old jail, a very old snowmobile, a
sheep shearing shed, and a replica of a blast furnace.
