Sumner Lake
Edwin Carter
Eagle Nest Lake

Edwin Carter Museum, Breckenridge, Colorado

Edwin Carter was a major figure in the study of the natural history of Colorado (and the entire Rocky Mountain West). Himself a miner, Carter became alarmed at the wholesale destruction of the natural environment around the booming mining town of Breckenridge. Trained in taxidermy, Carter began to collect and mount specimens of native Colorado wildlife. He displayed his collection in a log cabin that still stands a few blocks off Main Street in Breckenridge.
The “log cabin naturalist” achieved a significant measure of fame among natural historians of the late 19 th Century. Carter hosted visiting scientists from all over North America, and even Europe, at his museum in Breckenridge (which, at that time, was a remote mining camp in a vast mountain wilderness, not a destination ski resort). Shortly before his death, Carter sold his collection to a group of Denver businessmen, and it became the founding collection of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

 
EDA designed new exhibits for the museum under contract to the Breckenridge Heritage Alliance (BHA). Although the Alliance had a solid vision for the new exhibits, EDA held a daylong planning charrette with a range of stakeholders to develop interpretive themes and explore a full range of exhibit concept designs. The EDA project team included an architect versed in the restoration of historic structures. While this project is not “restoration” in the strict sense of the term, the design team researched period furniture and wall coverings to achieve an authentic period feel in the exhibit space, and collaborated with local contractors skilled in the restoration of historic structures during the remodeling.

A unique aspect of the public involvement process in this project was a half-day kids’ workshop in which EDA staff worked with a group of local schoolchildren to envision the type of exhibit experience they wanted. As far as we know, EDA is the only interpretive planning firm that regularly seeks to involve children in its planning process.

A fifteen-minute film titled “The Log Cabin Naturalist” was produced as part of the project. The film has been nominated for several awards and has already received Bronze Telly Awards ( http://www.tellyawards.com/awards/ ) in the categories of Biography/Documentary and Art Direction.

Project Highlights

  • interactive computer game in which visitors make their own museum by classifying artifacts
  • interactive riffle tube and cup of gold exhibits that help visitors understand the physics of placer mining
  • opening into the loft of the building that reveals murals and artifacts that make the loft appear as it was in Carter’s time
  • taxidermist’s workbench where visitors can try their hand at creating a deer cape mount
  • wildlife mural electronically linked to spotting scopes that are used to “hunt” the animals that are pictured in the mural
  • numerous restored taxidermy mounts originally crafted by Carter himself

EDA Products and Services

  • interpretive planning
  • exhibit design, fabrication and installation