Major funding for Idaho Experience is provided by the Estate of Darrell Arthur Kammer.

In support of independent media that connects communities and expands understanding.

Additional funding was provided by the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation, Anne Voilleque and Louise Nelson.

Judy and Steve Meyer.

And from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And contributions to the Friends of Idaho Public Television and viewers like you.

Thank You.

[Music] [Narrator] The interesting thing about history is there's evidence of it all around us.

Idaho has played host to pioneering explorers, mining booms and celebrated novelists.

Our state has even experienced its share of natural disasters.

At Idaho Experience, we continue to seek out the spectacular and the culturally enriching.

In doing so, we've uncovered three historic nuggets, An influential photographer from the early 20th century, A natural history museum housed within a premier Idaho college and another museum with a flavor all its own.

We're calling these nuggets Idaho's Hidden Gems.

[Music] [Jennifer Hills] Clarence Bisbee was a young man growing up in Nebraska.

He was interested from an early age in magic.

And maybe that sort of boosted an interest in photography as he got a little older.

And he ended up close to the age of 30 going to photography school in Illinois.

And there he met a young man named Charles Diehl, who in 1904 came out west and started a newspaper out here in the new town of Twin Falls, Idaho.

And he convinced his buddy Clarence to come out and see for himself what this area was like.

[Music, then Train Sound] I believe Clarence hopped on a train and got as far as Omaha.

There he supposedly flipped a coin to see if he was going to hop on the next train to Texas or the one that was heading for Shoshone, Idaho.

Whether it was heads or tails, it came out for Shoshone.

He came out here And caught the stage into Twin.

[Music] Bisbee came out, in 1906, probably at the behest of Diehl, because they realized that this was a new opportunity.

[Jim Gentry] In fact, the Twin Falls Land and Water Company had just completed the Milner Dam, so the water was being irrigated in 1905.

Obviously part of the Twin Falls Land and Water Company wanted to do was to demonstrate that they were open for business, that good things were happening.

[Narrator] And indeed they were thanks to Congress passing the Carey Act, also known as the Federal Desert Land Act, it helped pave the way for Idaho's canal system.

Potential homesteaders flocked to the area in droves looking for good deals on land.

[Jennifer] The Twin Falls Land and Water Company was going to need to sell this land.

And one of the ways they could sell it was through photography.

[Narrator] That was music to the ears of Clarence Bisbee.

So he rolled up his sleeves and he went to work.

[Jennifer] His quote is that he took a picture of every ditch and headgate in the region.

And he was taking pictures of the agriculture and the beginnings of the town and anything that he thought might attract people [Narrator] But like any entrepreneuer starting out, it took a little time for things to click.

[Music] [Jennifer] He wasn't actually hired officially by the canal company at that time.

Later he was officially hired as the photographer for the North Side Canal Company Project.

But in the early days, he was just taking pictures and then seeing if he could pass those along.

[Narrator] Then Bisbee had an idea.

Why not offer up his photos to be used in marketing brochures?

[Narrator] Clarence lucked out because he wasn't necessarily the first photographer in Twin Falls, but he was one of the first to be here and sort of take advantage of the opportunity of these brochures.

And I think he did fairly well a few years.

He would get requests for up to 1400 pictures a month from some of these businesses and promoters back east.

And then into the 19 tens he was selling postcards.

In a year, I think he could sell about 50,000 postcards.

[Narrator] By that time Bisbee had married Jessie Robinson.

Their relationship was close, in marriage and in business.

[Jennifer] We don't know a ton about Clarence Bisbee or his wife, Jessie Bisbee█s early lives.

But we do believe that they met or knew each other, at least, in Nebraska.

She was about nine years younger than Bisbee was.

They were married in 1910.

And when he would traipse his 50 to 60 pounds of negatives and cameras and other photography equipment around, she was right there with him.

But she's a writer, she's a poet.

And so she turns things around a little bit and starts to appeal to a different aesthetic, especially as they turn to some of the studio photography.

And in fact, when he moves his studio into one of the buildings, he advertises it as the Bisbee Electric studio because now he can use lighting to light his subjects and also to run some of his equipment, especially for processing photos.

But by the 19 teens, we're starting to see that a lot of land is being sold or now it's it's more of an investment instead of people coming out west.

There's not the high interest in promotion as you saw before.

Eventually other photographers moved into the area, and I think there was kind of a saturation in the market.

The Bisbee█s also started to invest in their own parcels of land.

And, in fact, I believe they owned 11 or 12 lots in and around our area as well as I think there were a couple of those lots that were in Nevada.

And so into the 1920s, in the late 1920s, we starting to see that they might have been sort of land rich, but now they were very cash poor.

[Music] Of course you get the depression on top of that.

Then you get foreclosures and you get the people asking for money.

As she gets a little bit older, you're starting to see the worries of the money coming in.

She starts to document, if not on a daily basis, on at least a weekly and even on a monthly basis how much they owe.

And you can tell that that is uppermost in her mind at some point.

Jessie Bisbee died in June of 1936.

She had been ill for some time.

Toward the end of her life her worries were starting to overwhelm her a little bit.

I don't know that that was a direct cause, definitely of her death, but I think it probably didn█t help while she was so ill.

[Narrator] Jessie's illness and subsequent death seemed to drain some of the life out of Clarence.

[Jennifer] When Jesse passes I think Clarence is virtually retired And in 1937 or 38, he is promoting a new photographer that's in the area that's coming in and running now, the Bisbee studio.

And by 39 or 40 the studio is out of his hands.

I think that he was probably as destitute as you could be in those days, unfortunately.

[Narrator] But in his heyday, Clarence Bisbee and his camera seemed to be just about everywhere.

[Jennifer] If there was a parage he was there.

If it was the opening of staged version of Mikado he was there.

There's some great moments that he captured on film that would have never been captured without him.

One of my favorite pictures is when World War One was over.

And and he must be standing on the courthouse steps of the crowd that was out there to celebrate Armistice Day.

I think that's incredible.

When Bisbee passes away in 1954, still miraculously, he has most of his glass plate negatives, if not all.

And they were just all in really good shape.

And there were about 2,200 to 2,500.

[Narrator] Gus Kelker, DeWitt Young, and Doctor Wallace Bond bought the collection from Bisbee heirs for $1,500 and donated it to the Twin Falls County Museum.

The collection eventually found its way the Twin Falls Public Library.

[Jim] The thing that really strikes me about Bisbee, he was showing life as it was taking place at that time.

And that life is very interesting in terms of interpreting his meaning.

What Bisbee saw is what you and I would want to show if you lived in Twin Falls and you have visitors, where do to want to take them?

He was also looking at how people made their livelihoods.

[Jennifer] I also think ee was very interested in art.

And later we see that definitely in the motto that he chose to etch at the top of his studio, which is life and art are one.

[Narrator] Clarence Bisbee█s role in promoting the Twin Falls area during the early 20th century cannot be overstated.

Not only have his photos stood the test of time, but like the photographer himself, they are nothing short of iconic.

[Jennifer] Now the glass plate negatives just live in some drawers and are kept quiet and dark and safe.

And we get to enjoy photos with another generation.

[Traffic Sounds and Music] [Harrison Pardue] when people think of Caldwell, Idaho they often think of a very small town overrun by train tracks.

What Caldwell is hiding is the College of Idaho.

College of Idaho is,in my opinion, the best school in Idaho.

[William Clark] College of Idaho is the oldest college in Idaho, founded in 1891.

It's a small liberal arts college.

[Narrator] The College of Idaho is renowned for its high academics and outstanding athletics.

It's also hiding something of its own, The Orma J. Smith Natural History Museum.

[Music] [Harrison] A lot of people think this is here just for people to come bring their kids, and they're like, oh, wow, there's birds in the cases, there's mammals.

[Narrator] But this museum is so much more.

[William] We were recently voted in the top 30 natural history museums affiliated with institutions of higher learning in the United States.

That that's up against comparisons with Yale, with Brigham Young University, with lots of big, big schools.

So we felt pretty good about that.

We're located in the basement of the science building, so not really visible.

People come down the stairs,and most of them are really kind of, oh, my!

[Ashley Ferguson] I didn█t even know this half of the state had a natural history museum.

So, when I saw the advertisement for it I was pretty excited.

Like, really?

They have one?

I don't even know.

And it's this hidden gem.

[Narrator] Doctor Ashley Ferguson was hired by the the museum on a three year National Science Foundation grant to catalog and digitize a large portion of the artifacts here.

[Ashley] I think my first reaction was, wow, it's a lot bigger in here than I thought.

especially the mineral collection that we have, the Evans Collection.

[William] It was given to the collegeby Glenn L. Evans who was famous in Caldwell for a fly tying.

To do some of that work he traveled the world and collected gems along the way.

What you see here is maybe a third of the actual collection.

There's one storage room that's full of material also.

The research collections that we have here in the museum basically span all the fields of natural history.

We have stuff from the Hagerman Fossil Beds.

We have some very old fossils that go way back in the millions of years.

If it's a natural history topic, we probably have representation of it here in the museum.

But we need more space.

We need either a new building built to museum specs, which might be in the 50,000 square foot neighborhood to be able to have proper exhibits and working space.

Or there may be a potential of converting an existing building on campus.

Those take megabucks.

So, right now maybe about 1% of our items might be on exhibit at any one time.

The other materials are essentially in research cabinets where they take up less space.

[Dr.Janet Duffy] All of these items were worn by the Papua New Guinea natives.

And they're made of shell, teeth and ivory.

Some of these date from the early 1950s and were actually photographed in National Geographic.

[Music] One of our big projects is the Luther Douglas sand paintings.

Luther Douglas was an Idaho native, and his daughter has donated the sand paintings and other items to us.

And it's a very important cultural collection.

And also, we recently just got this solid teak statue of a Buddhist goddess, and apparently she was given by the Dalai Lama to Luther Douglas.

[Narrator] Doctor Ferguson says the exact number of artifacts here is hard to nail down.

[Ashley] I don't know, I think we guessed maybe six million, something like that.

So it's going to take a few more grants to finish it.

It's a lot of stuff.

[Volunteer] And six, six, seven is the same.

[Ashley] There's a few different collections that we're working on.

So a lot of it is insects.

We're going to work on the pinned insects as well.

And Montana and Idaho fish.

[William] Our fish collection, is the fish collection probably for the Pacific Northwest if you don't count marine species.

A while back we obtained the University of Idaho's fish collection.

And the University of Montana fish collection was going to be orphaned.

So our fish curator, Doctor Don Zaroban arranged to have that picked up and brought here.

[Dr.

Don Zaroban] What we always say is, well before you throw it in the dumpster, call us.

We aren't here to take over everybody█s collection.

But you can█t replace this stuff.

This fish is out of the Salish Sea over by Klallam, Washington, collected on May 14th, 1960.

[Ashley] When we digitize this material that allows us to be able to put it online.

It puts us on the map and allows more people to know the scientific research that is available here.

I think part of my goal here as I continue this position is to help people recognize the amount of material that we have and how to utilize it, and get the public more involved with using this material and enjoying it.

[William] Obviously, the College of Idaho students utilize this heavily.

Doctor Rochelle Johnson, each year, has one class where the students work in the museum on a specific topic or an item to research.

[Harrison] When students get to engage and take part in the museum behind the scenes they really have a shock moment where there is like a whole other world beyond what you just see in the exhibits.

[Ava Baker] Rochelle had encouraged us to choose a specimen that, like, we didn't know a whole lot about.

Because maybe you'll find something that you really like along the way.

Finding a passion in a subject that I wasn't even, like, remotely interested in before was something that was really interesting for me.

[Grace Sanchez] Now the I've been doing research on this, that has influenced my perspective on, like, coming to museums because museums like this can show you a lot.

It shows the wonders that this world has to offer.

And I feel very grateful to be in this college and have, you know, like, be able for me to come here any time.

[Music] [Traffic Sounds and Music] [Narrator] About the last thing you█d expect to see outside of Grand View, Idaho is a sign for a museum.

But Lawson█s Legacy Museum is another one of Idaho█s hidden gems.

[Ronalee Linsenmenn] Oh,it█s the most glorious hidden gem.

I think it's the most unique museum I've ever gone to in my life, and I█ve gone to a lot of them.

[Narrator] Like many first time visitors, Ronalee Linsenmann happened upon the museum by chance.

[Ronalee] Years ago I had to go go to a funeral in Grand View.

So, I went to the funeral, and as I was driving by I saw this wonderful sign, a museum, which I'm addicted to museums.

So, I pulled over on my way home and came in and started looking around.

[Narrator] What she found was a mosaic of western artifacts and memorabilia.

A young girl once called the museum the Smithsonian of Idaho.

The property was originally named the Emu-Z-Um.

The name was perfect.

Afterall, they had hundreds of the birds.

To understand how it came to be You need to know a bit about Jack Lawson.

Jack was an avid collector from the time he was a little boy until the day he died.

[Belva] He collected arrowheads and bottles and pocket knives just as a young kid.

Then he decided that wasn't enough.

[Narrator] So, one day in his 60s he asked his wife Belva for a favor.

[Belva] If he could put his old machinery up the road.

And I said, yeah, if you█ll build me a little western town to put some of your stuff.

That was it.

We just started out with a few buildings and when we'd find more stuff in the shed then we█d build another building.

A little bit at a time it just grew.

And people told by word of mouth it was a place to go.

So, we decided we couldn't do it for just letting them come.

[Narrator] So, they started charging folks to visit the little old western town they dubbed the Emu-Z-Um.

The emu craze eventually fell flat, but the museum took flight, and Jack kept on collecting more stuff.

[Belva] He always said he was cheap.

And he bought boxes of stuff for a dollar.

There's lots of things he brought home that I didn't know what we were going to do with it.

But it turned out to be better than the last one.

So, you never know till you start.

[Narrator] The museum eventually grew to 78 rooms, and so did its Western persona.

It█s almost as if you█ve walked onto a movie set.

There's a shed with horse drawn wagons, a wall of doorknobs and a massive collection of antique bottles.

Not long after they opened, Jack and Belva dug deep into their life savings to buy the contents of another southern Idaho museum.

[Belva] We knew the three girls that inherited the Silver City Museum.

We had only been open a year.

And they came down and asked if we would be interested in buying.

And if we were, they would like to have it relocated.

So, we went up to look at it.

And I told Jack it was a lot of money and maybe we shouldn't do this.

Jack says you want a new pickup or you want Silver City City stuff?

I said, whatever you want, dear.

[Narrator] It's very easy to lose track of time here.

There's just so much to absorb.

There's a train room with a miniature locomotive layout.

There are also rows and rows of model cars.

Aside from the path down the middle, the doll room is filled from wall to wall.

These American classics grab your attention the minute you walk through the door.

It's clear that Jack was fascinated by all things historical.

But rocks were his true passion.

He spent countless hours right here.

[Belva] 24 hours a day that polisher run.

[Narrator] Jack may have been the museum█s primary collector, but its look and feel are thanks to Belva.

[Belva] If you love something it isn't hard to do.

You just think of it in the middle of the night and think of what do you want to do the next day.

[Visitor] That█s a milking machine.

[Narrator] Thousands of people have come here from all over the world.

But one prominent Idahoan helped Ronalee get Jack and Belva an Idaho Historical Society Esto Perpetua Award in 2021.

[Belva] This one lady was always,every room she went in, She was surprised and so tickled about how everything looked and just bragged on everything.

And I thought, she's really a nice lady.

[Ronalee] Here she was hosting the governor█s wife, and she had no idea.

I did contact the governor's wife and asked if she would write a little recommendation because of that fun little adventure she'd had out here.

[Narrator] Jack passed away not long after they received the award, and Belva█s family convinced her to move on.

But it took time to sell because Belva was looking for the right buyers.

Then along came the Florian's.

[Jessica Florian] When Jack passed away he wanted her to keep it going and keep it alive.

And to continue it.

And so that's why we were like, you know, this has to be called Lawson's legacy, because this is their legacy, even though we're taking it over and working it.

[Eddie Florian] Yeah, the first time told her we was going to name it Lawson█s Legacy, she says, you don't have to do that.

[Jessica/Eddie] And I was like, You're going to make me cry.

[Eddie] I said, you're the ones built it, not the Florians.

[Laugh] I said, we're just going to run it.

[Narrator] So the Florian's have taken the reins and are plowing ahead with their new lives.

[Eddie] We█ve kind of devoted our lives to it, here.

Anybody can relate to something in here.

There's, It's not even possible you couldn't.

[Narrator] The museum may have a new name, and it may be down to its last emu.

But the Florian's want the former Emu-z-Um to say pretty much as it█s always been, a peaceful place to explore Idaho history in a little old western town they now call home.

[Jessica] We want Jack to be looking down, smiling, going good job, Belva.

You found the right ones.

[Laugh] Major funding for Idaho Experience is provided by the Estate of Darrell Arthur Kammer.

In support of independent media that connects communities and expands understanding.

Additional funding was provided by the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation, Anne Voilleque and Louise Nelson.

Judy and Steve Meyer.

And from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And contributions to the Friends of Idaho Public Television and viewers like you.

Thank You.