The museum opens for the season today. Don Bearwood sat on the old wooden train depot bench with a smile on his face. If only this bench could talk. Not much in the Gold Bar Museum talks, but every single artifact tells a story. The tales of early days of the railroad and gold mining town are affluent in the small museum, which has been operating since 1995.
Today marks the opening of another season.
The pioneer museum will open at 1 p.m. With special visitors and about 15 volunteers on hand, locals can tour the place and share in special memories of the town. Bearwood and his wife, Ellen, are volunteers and spend a number of weekends each summer at the one-story wooden structure on U.S. 2 between First and Second streets. An architectural lighting designer, Bearwood spent most of his life in Seattle. But since the 1940s, when his father would take him on fishing trips on the Wallace and Skykomish rivers near Gold Bar, Bearwood has thought of it as his second home. So when he and his wife retired about 10 years ago, they moved there and began looking for ways to become a part of the community.