MUSEUM PROJECTS AND EXHIBITS! The Cracker Creek Museum of Mining has become a landmark here in Sumpter, Oregon thanks to the hard work and diligence of our board of directors and members of the museum and our generous donors. We feel the Cracker Creek Museum of Mining has become a vital part of our local Sumpter Museums. And like most museums, we realize how important it is to work diligently to achieve our goals and plans that will ensure our growth and continue to provide a source of gold mining history of the Sumpter Area and to preserve the local historic heritage for visitors to Sumpter, Oregon! With our latest donations received, and most recently, moving the Historic Monighan down to the museum site, we are pleased that Member Mark Henderson has been working on a grant with the Geld-Wen Foundation, which has been pretty much fulfilling our financial need for completion of Phase One. See Monighan photos here! See The Monighan being moved down to the Museum here! Now that we have a sizeable outdoor collection of mining artifacts and equipment, we are planning, and working on, constructing kiosks that will allow for self-guided tours. These kiosks are also important for the interpretation of each exhibit. Long-Range......... we are planning for an outdoor visitors area, to include a picnic area with tables and perhaps a bbq and parking area for the conveinance of museum visitors. THE FUTURE............... Our next construction project at the museum site will be a much needed restoration shop which will include a museum office and storage for the blacksmith collection. This shop will be important for the museum to implement its mining artifacts and equipment restoration projects. HARD ROCK MINING TOURS............ The Cracker Creek Museum of Mining has been working on plans to offer interpretive tours of historic hard rock mining areas in the Sumpter Valley. These tours would be available to CCMM visitors. Tours would include schools and groups. In additon, it has been discussed that a self-guided tour map could be developed for visitors who wish to explore our historic Sumpter gold mining areas on their own. See Tour Photos here! A future project that we have been discussing is to construct a building on the museum site to house a gold mining history exhibit which will include a museum gift shop, visitors center, and restrooms. This is an ambitious project to include an underground gold mine recreation that visitors will be able to enter and get a genuine feel for being in a gold mine! In addition to the Monighan Exhibit, we expect the gold mine exhibit to be a big draw to the public and good for our local Sumpter Museums! MUSEUM EXHIBITS What makes Sumpter Museums special to our visitors is the unique exhibits that we have been fortunate to collect over the years. The Cracker Creek Museum of Mining has been especially fortunate to receive so many generous donations of historic gold mining equipment that makes our museum so interesting and so worthwhile to visit. We are equally fortunate to have board members, volunteers, and local citizens that have the mechanical knowledge, time, equipment, and are willing to help restore some of the historic mining equipment to working order. And this year, one of our most ambitious exhibits has started coming to life.......The Monighan Dragline. In August of 2008, thanks to the help of members and volunteers alike, we were pleased to see the Historic Monighan moved to the museum site! We were pleased in 2005, to receive word that the museum was awarded an additional grant of $1214. for the Monighan moving project, making a total of $5200. in grants received from The D.E. and Jane Clarke Foundation. The support we are receiving from this foundation is very important to the overall project and for which the museum is very grateful! Member Archie Titus has fabricated the new bearing caps to replace the ones taken from the dragline years ago, then, when these new parts are installed, we will pour new babbitt in the bearings...... A while back, we had a Cat Engine loaned to us by the Borgen Family that will power the Monighan for its short walks at the museum site. Cracker Creek Museum of Mining founding member, Nils Christensen and member Leonard Bacon, as well as other members and volunteers, have worked hard to restore the engine to working order. They are now fabricating new engine mounts and adjusters. See photos here! NEW EXHIBITS Thanks to generous donors, we continue to add to our list of gold mining artifacts and equipment at the musuem and to display them for public viewing as we work on restoration plans. We have been very proud to receive a heavy blacksmith collection from Western Oregon which was acquired over the past three years by grants from the D. and J. Clark Foundation and the Leo Adler Community Foundation. Summer 2005, Dan Warnock of Warnock Ranches in the Sumpter Valley, invited the museum to look at some old mining equipment he thought we might be able to include in the museum. We were excited to find the equipment was a large tromel screen and conveyor with a feed hopper. It turns out this equipment belonged to Rody Harris, who was one of the principle partners in the Northwest Development Company and owner of the Monighan................... If any of these projects above interest you. or......you have ideas for new projects at the museum, and you would like to volunteer or become a member of Cracker Creek Museum of Mining, please contact us here: info@sumpteroregongold.org top of page main page