Cowboy Carnegies featured in Thermopolis Saturday

THERMOPOLIS – The Alliance for Historic Wyoming (AHW), along with the Hot Springs County Museum will be celebrating historic Carnegie libraries around Wyoming with a traveling exhibit and tour this Saturday.

Built in 1917, the Carnegie Library in Thermopolis, located at 328 Arapahoe Street, is one of 16 Carnegie library buildings built in Wyoming, financed by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. At one time the richest man in America, Carnegie began financing community libraries in 1883.

With small grants of around $12,000, Carnegie provided the building and furniture to any community that requested a library, while the community was responsible for the maintenance, books and staff.

In 1902, the “Women of the West Club” of Thermopolis opened a rudimentary reading room and “library” in the Hot Springs County Courthouse. In 1913, the town solicited to become a Carnegie community, and the library was built in 1917, with a grand opening in 1919. In 1962, the Carnegie Library became a government building, when the town library moved to a new location.

On Saturday, guests will be able to tour the library, and at the Hot Springs County Museum, view an AHW exhibit on the 16 original and nine remaining Carnegie libraries in the state. (Only six are still libraries.)

Tours of the library building will begin at 1 p.m., and David Cunningham, director of the Meeteetse Museum and a board member of AHW, will give a presentation on the history of Carnegie libraries at 2 p.m. at the museum. A meet-and greet will follow, along with a presentation on the modern library.

Carnegie library buildings still exist in Thermopolis, Evanston, Green River, Lander, Laramie, Lusk, Newcastle, Rock Springs and Wheatland.

The libraries in Buffalo, Basin, Casper, Cheyenne, Cody, Douglas and Sheridan were demolished between 1955 and 1974.

A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, at a personal cost to Carnegie of $60 million. Carnegie eventually gave away $350 million, nearly 90 percent of his fortune, to support a variety of charities. His philanthropies included a Simplified Spelling Board, a fund that built 7,000 church organs, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.