090616_Kirtland Visitors' Center

We left on the 5th, Labor Day, and found the traffic pretty light almost all day long.  Only got held up a little bit towards the end of the day but it was only near the bigger cities.  We traveled a little over 600 miles that day and didn't get into our hotel room until nearly 10 PM that evening.  Made for a pretty long day.  But, the longest part of the trip was over.  I had hoped we would get in early enough to go see some sights that night but it was all we could do to just hit the sack.

Our site visiting really didn't start until the next day at the Kirtland Visitor's Center.

Started early in the morning with the Visitors' Center.

The Newel K Whitney store was one of our first stops.  It's just inside the center property.  The guide took our picture.  They managed to convince the local city to re-route the street around the site so they could use the road for a walking path and not a roadway for traffic.  Makes the site very pedestrian friendly.

Inside the store, the shelving and merchandise.  This store has shown up in several church videos of the Kirtland era.

A very interesting use of slices of corn for a checkers set.  I don't think I've ever seen one of these before.  Nice use of your resources!  

What visit to a country store would be complete without a pict of the "Mail Lady" with the mailbox?

The original key to the front door.  Not a lot of these are still around.

The room in the back of the store was for people that could not afford to buy goods.  They would bring in items for trade needed.  This was actually the beginning of the "Bishop's Storehouse" for those in need in the church.

We next moved upstairs for more of the tour.  Here is the actual floorboards that are still in use.

We moved over into the very room that Joseph and the brethren met for the School of the Prophets.  Here they received revelations on various items that were compiled into our Doctrine and Covenants.  This is our guide and she did a wonderful tour for us and bore a heartfelt testimony to us.

Visited the Whitney home on the property.

This is a bowl full of marbles like the kind the kids played with in pioneer days.

Our guide asked us if anyone knew what the silver item was in the middle of the crib.  Someone correctly identified it as a baby bottle.  It was made from lead.  Do you think that could cause any problems?  

This building was original but they have no idea what was in the building so it's a kind of visitor orientation center.

There was this nice topographic map of the area.  A of other items to look at also.

Next stop was the on-site lumber mill.

Cross-cut saw blade.  Pretty good size.

Powered by a water wheel that only needs a few inches of water to actually run.

In the back of the sawmill they had all the power tools so they had the workshop to put all of the really nice woodwork together right in the mill.  Nice examples.   

Next was the ashery where they made potash to sell to those that wanted the product.  

Inside the ashery.  The white stuff on the right is white potash.  Worth about $200 a pound at the time because it took so long to make it.

I had several other places to visit this day so look for them as I get around to it.  It takes quite awhile to put this all together.  More to come...