Guest: Mike Seymour Host: Ben Long Co-Host: Elizabeth Rasmussen Topic: As the fort’s Museum technician, Mike Seymour talks about the fort’s past, how we can better tell those stories through the items we have in our museum collection, and the care that goes into preserving these items. These items carry the stories of the past people who have used them. In this episode, we also talk about some of the items that have found their way to Fort Larned and some that have been unearthed right here at the fort.

[Footsteps theme music and sounds of the fort play]

Ben Long: Welcome to Footsteps The Fort Larned National Historic Site Podcast. This season we're taking a look at Fort Larned's past present and future and this is part two on Fort Larned past. I'm your host Ranger Ben and co-hosting with me today is our volunteer Elizabeth. How's it going?

Elizabeth: It's going good. It's a little hot.

Ben: A little hot, yeah. We're recording this in September and we are eagerly awaiting the fall weather that is no doubt coming as this episode airs. As we get started I why don't you to tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe what got you interested in doing stuff here at the Fort.

Elizabeth: Well my mom is the secretary treasurer of the Fort Larned Old Guard and she came out to the Mess and Muster event and I got to see the other lady volunteers dressed up in their period clothing and the men were in their uniforms from the period. And I've always kind of wanted to I guess dress up! The little girl inside of me just wants to dress up all the time. I used to see the ladies at Dodge at Boot Hill they just step in their clothing for Boot Hill and then we went to Bent's Fort when I was like 11. And there were a couple lady volunteers there and that's just something I've kind of always been interested in but never really realized I could partake in. And so when I told George I was like "How do I get into this?" I was like "How do I do this?" And George was like "Well here!" and he handed me a volunteer packet and now I'm here. And now I am a school teacher and sometimes a lady of leisure in officers' row.

Ben: It's great having you out and being able to interpret the post school and you always have some fun activities for the kids over there too.

Elizabeth: Try to keep it exciting try to make it come alive for the visitors.

Ben: Absolutely! Now as we get into the episode, today's guest is a Museum Technician Mike Seymour who's been working out here for quite a while and working with our artifacts. So it was interesting looking at his perspective as we dive deeper into Fort Larned's past and into these items that help tell the story. Personally one of my favorite parts and always one of my favorite parts of his job is taking a look at some of the original artifacts and these things that have so much age to them but are still preserved and still here thanks to a lot of the work that he does.

Elizabeth: Yeah, he brought in some artifacts and that was that was really cool to see the different surgical tools and the toys that some of the kids could have used on the fort.

Ben: It was a great interview I had a great time and we hope you also enjoy the episode, so here you go!

[Whoosh]

Ben: Alright so welcome Mike.

Mike Seymour: Thank you for having me!

Ben: Glad to have you on. So as we get started why don't you tell us your title, how long you've worked at the park, any other parks you might have worked at.

Mike: Alright, I have only worked at this park. I came here as a volunteer in 1996. Basically got a seasonal job in 2000 through various step and grade changes up until-- it stayed the same up until about 2019 when I got the job title of Museum Technician. Although I had been doing the work from 2000 to 2019 through some problems with HR they wanted me to either get my PD changed or stop doing Museum work. So we talked it over with management here and they said well we don't want to lose you as doing the museum work so we will change your PD, and so here I am.

Ben: As I've worked here since 2019 when your PD changed, it's been wonderful to help you out in in some cases and sort of see behind that curtain and see what your work is and all that goes into it. Fun to see how these artifacts that you deal with kind of help tell the story of the fort.

Mike: Yeah, we have a lot of stuff here, a lot of stuff.

Ben: And even more stuff in the regional collection too, right?

Mike: Right. Yes, if an actual count would be about 216,000 plus. Now, 200,000 are at Region in storage up there, so my immediate challenge is inventories and cataloging. Don't do much de-accessioning but accessioning and cataloging and things like that. So I have about close to 12,000-13,000 items here of which about just under three thousand are on display throughout the park, in all the buildings.

Ben: Now for our listeners who haven't had a hand in museum work before what-- what is accessioning and de-accessioning

Mike: Well, accessioning is basically when you accession something you take ownership of that artifact. We get items that are donated, we get items that are transferred from other parks, we purchase items. So no matter how you uh acquire the item, if it hasn't been modified, if it hasn't been refinished -- which are two other categories that we have to consider -- the item is usually an original item is usually a accessioned which it goes into accession book and then cataloged into the into the catalog system or into the program the museum program that we have on computer here. De-accessioning is when you find something in there that was cataloged in error or it's out our scope of collections time frame. There are several other things that can possibly become a reason why you need to de-accession, but most of out we've found out that a lot of things back in the 1970s, the Park Service wanted everything cataloged. Meaning reproduction, period pieces, props, everything was to be cataloged. Well now they've realized that that was a big mistake, so we're one of the parks that still has a lot of these things that are items I should say that are still cataloged. So that's been one of my projects this year I finally have permission to de-accession some of the reproduction items and things like that but that. They are in the count of this 216,000 but they total about just over uh six hundred, right at 600. Gives you an idea. But yeah, de-accessioning is basically just getting rid of the stuff you, like I say, excess maybe it's a reproduction, maybe it's been refinished or repaired in some way, so it basically isn't original. But we can still use it, you know, it's still it still passes the 10-foot rule so to speak you know.

Ben: But it isn't one of those original artifacts that needs special attention.

Mike: Right. Now you can't do that with archeology. With archeology, everything is cataloged no matter what because basically when it comes out of the ground or-- if it comes out of the ground it's archeology, if it you find it on the surface, which maybe it worked to the surface which happens, it's a field find. Either way it's cataloged, you can't get around cataloging archeology. So if that's the class, again it gets cataloged.

Elizabeth: What's your favorite part of your role at Fort Larned?

Mike: My favorite part is basically it is: I have a challenge that we have a lot of volunteers and sometimes they take it upon themselves that "I'd like this item over here better than where they have it." Sometimes they move them and don't tell me and I get a little upset because I have to go find these things. Because you basically-- the original stuff may be mixed in with the non-original stuff but if it's cataloged you have to account for it that's the downside of it. But like I say taking care of, making sure everything is secure, making sure it's there.

Ben: And in helping you with inventories and things like that it gets very specific as to where that item is in the room.

Mike: Yes. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back but when I got here an item might say it's in the Commissary. Okay, we're in the Commissary? So the program allows you to elaborate and you know more fine-tune that location. When I also arrived here, nothing was photographed. In the past 6-7 years I've photographed over 12,000 items. And it makes it much easier when you say okay I've got two of these, now which one is it? So you go to the photograph and you can tell you know by the photograph that it's uh this one or that one.

Ben: A lot of the things we deal with are 150 plus years old, what goes into making sure that we'll have them for another 150 years and in the state that they're currently in?

Mike: Well, environment is the key. If you have a climate change especially humidity that changes for let's say five or ten percent overnight you're in trouble. You need to if the rooms don't have HVAC or air conditioning and heat and you can't really control them the best thing you can do then, like we have, is to slow it down. So the rooms are sealed, the museum rooms are sealed to where it may take 30 to 40 hours before let's say from fall or spring when temperatures can rise and humidities can rise and fall then basically it does it slows down the change in humidity and that's the key to keeping a certain artifacts you know preserved. And of course everything that you-- well I should say you should you can't handle a piece of textile like you would a piece of wood, you know. So basically there's certain criteria to take care and preserve textiles and certain things for metal, certain things for wood, certain things for ceramics. And of course I always say ceramics usually take care of themselves unless you drop and break them then then you've got troubles.

Ben: In an ideal world, you'd have all of these items in a sealed vault at a consistent temperature and humidity, so in your mind where is that line between preserving these things and presenting them?

Mike: Well the museum handbook says basically 55% is a point of no return for perfect preservation. Anything 55% or below is sufficient or more than sufficient. But we can't always achieve that, so basically it's we have hygrometers in every room and we monitor them quite frequently to see you know what is changing and then if we do detect the change we look at some of the more vulnerable artifacts to say or to see if they have been affected.

Ben: For those that might argue that say like a book should just stay in a vault so that we can make sure we keep it.

Mike: Well that can be a pretty controversial in the fact that you know you may want to see the book on display or something like that but if you can't control the humidity for that book or for any communication object basically you need to you need to get it out of display. Most of our stuff again will pass the 10-foot rule. It looks like a book or an old book you know from a distance but it's really not. Not to tell-- not to give away all the secrets but yeah you've got to think of the artifact. If it, you know, deteriorates and at a certain point, I know you work with leather you know the same thing. Once you're down below 28 percent of moisture content in leather it's done there's nothing you can do to bring it back and it's just gonna dry up and crack.

Ben: The key is to get it before you get to that point.

Mike: Right, right. Yeah and do all you can to get it to a point where you can stabilize it so to speak. Firearms and such are handled with you know observation of rust and looking for and trying to get rid of live rust. We have several ways of doing that but you know of course once rust attacks metal, you may be able to make it look better but it'll leave a mark you know like a dark or discoloration. So once it's gone beyond that you're pretty much committed to taking care of what's left. So all you can do is check them over frequently and keep them with a light coat of oil so that they'll stay preserved or stay rust free for a long time.

Elizabeth: What's the most difficult item you've had to preserve?

Mike: Well, I think in the terms of a lot of work we have some original uniforms from officers that were in some Kansas volunteer units, we have Charles Larned, a cousin to the fort's namesake, we have his uniform from West Point. He was an instructor there after he left the Seventh Cavalry right after the Little Big Horn Battle in Montana. But I think the clothing, we have a lot of women's clothing The training for taking care of these are you know store them flat. But basically, store them as if they somebody's wearing them laying flat and the only way you can do that is take acid-free or non-lignin paper and roll them up and stuff them up the sleeves. You don't want a crease you don't want the weight of the garment to come down and put a crease in it because it weakens the fiber. We do that with quilts too. Any quilter will know that you got to refold these things frequently or at least once a year or so to preserve the fabric on a quilt.

Ben: What would you say is one of your favorite artifacts that we have here in our collection/

Mike: Well I was asked this question and I'm asked this question not frequent, but often and my favorite is a mailbox that was actually used here at the fort it was it's a mail routing box. When you open it up it still has little inked cubby holes so to speak. And they're marked with certain people like first sergeants, I say that plurally, they'll be a mark-- there was a label for buglers. Again it's an artifact that was here. Obviously when the fort closed it was part of the items that were auctioned off, evidently the Army thought they didn't need it. So it was auctioned off and a lumber yard here in Larned bought it and used it in their company business for years and years and somehow it got donated back to the fort. There some furniture that was basically belonged to a second Lieutenant that was here in the 1870s and through various circumstances it was donated back in the 1950s. So we have his furniture that was actually here when he was a serving officer here. When you have something with provenance, and you have something that has a story behind the provenance it's kind of neat to be able to know that story and be able to you know repeat it to-- for other people that might be interested.

Ben: Now that mailbox is on display in our Museum.

Mike: Yes it is.

Ben: Would that have been in the Adjutant's Office?

Mike: Yes it would have been in the Adjutant's Office. Some would call it post headquarters, a military man today would call it post headquarters, but back then the Adjutant's Office was-- meant the same thing basically. So yes, that's where it would have been and we just got it on display because we do have, as you both know, we do have our new Museum that just opened up in 2021. So this mailbox has been in storage for nearly 30, 25-30 years. It was an iconic piece that we all felt that needed to be in the museum when it was completed. And we were a little disappointed in the fact that the case wasn't made big enough to where you could open the door all the way and see the names of you know where the mail was supposed to be routed. But if you look at an angle you can see one or two of them.

Ben: And the artifacts that do have provenance as you were saying is really cool we have like you're saying not only the second Lieutenant's items, furniture and otherwise, but we also have a, thankfully through our friends group, we've been able to acquire a third infantry rifle and Captain Nolan's revolver too.

Mike: Yes, and we thank them so much that's-- those are very iconic especially Captain Nolan who was right from the get-go in charge or the CO or company commander of "A" Company, 10th Cavalry. His downfall was getting lost on the stake planes in Texas and quite a few horses and men suffered severely several of horses and men died, but he survived.

Elizabeth: So you talk about how many artifacts you have what is the strangest artifact?

Mike: I brought a couple over here and I'm not sure if anybody has ever heard of a tool called a trephine. Fort Larned is still at least by the late 1860s we're still practicing caveman medicine out here. I have a comment that I read or to repeat that I read, an author said the true gentlemen of the West were Army Surgeons. And I have to kind of believe that because in the Army you had to become a surgeon you had to pass a rigid test, whereas in the civilian world, if I wanted to become a doctor I could go to a diploma mill college and peek in the door say I was here here's your money give me my diploma and I'm out the door. And this happened quite a bit. But again the Military Surgeon had to pass a rigid test so I really believe they were the true gentleman of the West. But there were some surgeons that weren't always uh up to speed so to speak. For example phenol, carbolic acid that's been around since the 1830's, some surgeons embraced it, some surgeons says "I've never needed it before, why should I start now?" But one thing they all didn't have was x-rays. So if you've got a something in your abdomen that needs to come out you're going to probably be probed with either the doctor's fingers or you've got a tool called a sounder, which is a curved instrument that basically goes in and kind of acts like uh the old talking to talking to your friend through a couple of cans with a string in between. It will when it hits something solid and bone too but you if you know a bone's supposed to be there then it's a bone, but if it's not you're getting a sound through this steel or metal tool. It'll you know give you an indication of where it's at so you can start probing and see if you can get that out. Another thing I brought was a trephine. I think I already mentioned that. The trephine basically is to relieve pressure on the skull. It's actually a skull drill. I've seen pictures of skeletons or skulls that has had that operation performed on them and it's very scary. I mean the skull does not heal, the skull that that hole will be there forever. So to have that done was basically in my opinion a last resort because some of these holes in these skulls look like the size of a silver dollar or even a little bit bigger. And some of the locations it's like where do I go to find this problem? He's got pressure on the brain so I'll tap the top. Well that didn't get it, so I'll tap the side, I don't know how many-- I've only seen skulls with just one hole so I don't know how they knew where to put the hole but in any way shape or form it wasn't pleasant.

Ben: Could we see them?

Elizabeth: I'm excited.

Mike: There's the sounder. So that would go into go into a wound and just move around until-- and you can stick your ear you know here and hear a scrape or whatever you'll know that's where it's at. And the trephine. It's a wooden handle that comes off to fit in the surgeon's kit. But basically it's just a flat drill. A person that is a machinist, it would make him think of an inmill where it's just basically a drill with instead of having a point to it it's completely flat. But it's very very sharp, very sharp. It wouldn't take much to cut in scalp and get into bone.

Ben: How would you describe those

Elizabeth: They're definitely sharp. It feels like the teeth on a saw which is basically what it is.

Ben: And I mean that's meant to cut a-- basically a circle out of the skull, right?

Mike: Right.

Ben: And then the sounder almost looks like, in my mind it looks like two jalapeno peppers on a metal rod.

Mike: Yeah, they're curved just like a jalapeno pepper, you're right. That's-- I wouldn't have thought of that, but that's good.

Ben: Yeah, there was think of an account that I heard where a soldier got injured and a surgeon was with them out in the field and was digging around trying to find the projectile and he went back to it later because he couldn't find it initially and the soldier asked him "If you're going to fish around in there could you at least clip your fingernails first?" So having something like a sounder would definitely be a lot better even though by today's standards it's archaic.

Mike: Well like I say, if you don't sterilize it it's not much better than your fingers but maybe a little bit. But sterilizing, you know that's kind of the byproduct of a lot of 19th century problems basically. Let's-- for example in interpretation when somebody asked me "What was their favorite drink?" I usually say anything hot I don't care if it's a 110° out there, but coffee or hot tea as opposed to water, as opposed to lemon sugar, as opposed to cold tea, because they don't realize it but when they boil the coffee water they're taking care of cholera they eradicating cholera with the boiling of the water. It's a mindset thing in the fact that you know when I drink water or my friend drinks water he gets sick sometimes and sometimes he dies and sometimes very fast. I'll stick with hot because-- anything hot because that's one thing I can tell that when we all drink coffee we don't get sick, we don't die, that transposes to the food, it was always boiled except in the field it was fried in the field and boiled in the garrison-- at garrison.

Ben: Anything you'd like to add while we're on this topic of these interesting artifacts?

Elizabeth: It's just completely different compared to the instruments that doctors use today. I feel like a lot of doctors, if they could see some this stuff and see how procedures were done in this time period they would be appalled.

Mike: Yes they would.

Elizabeth: So you work with a lot of different weapons. The fort has-- it was an Army fort so there's a lot of weapons. How many weapons do you deal with?

Mike: Cataloged wise we have about 40. A lot of them were used here -- not physically, but I mean a lot of that style or type was used here that we have in the collection. As I think reported earlier or talked about earlier we do have a couple of "F" Company Third Infantry rifles that were actually marked as such. A little side note on this the Army or let's say the government, the Ordinance Department, didn't like you stamping anything. Stenciling was okay but stamping was not, they didn't like that, especially Springfield Armory. So how these certain companies got away they would have had to with company funds would have had to purchase that stamp and how they-- which is not a problem, but uh whether they were reprimanded or discouraged or said "No thank you we'll go ahead and stamp them anyway", how they got by with it we don't know but interesting little small tidbit of military Authority there.

Ben: It's almost like the "D"'s that are carved on the barracks from Company "D" of the Third Infantry.

Mike: Exactly. As defacing government property was an offense just like it is today. You carve your name at Fort Larned and you get to go to Hutchinson, Kansas to see a federal judge to assess your fine and it's not cheap.

Elizabeth: Do you have a favorite weapon not really, not really. You know, when you're taking care of all you try to give each one equal time and we do have one weapon I'd like to see out here that was used on as an experiment. The Army made about 1,018 of these weapons and they're called Ward-Burton and actually Fort Larned got 16 of them from what I gather, to pass around to the troops to see how they like it. The Ordinance Department did this quite regularly when a new weapon would come up. Part of the testing of it would be to test it in cold climate, test it in hot climate, you know and we actually got about 16 of them to pass amongst the Third Infantry to test. It would have been interesting what their evaluation was on it because the Army didn't adopt it. But I just brought that up because it is something we'd like to have but don't have. It'd be nice in the collection.

Ben: Over the years working with you it's been wonderful to hear your expertise on all things historic firearms.

Mike: I've been collecting Firearms myself since 1957.

Ben: Just a couple of years.

Mike: Yeah, just a couple of years. It's a fun hobby and it is getting very very expensive now. Certain weapons that can remember seeing at gun shows that were under $1,000 or are approaching $5,000, $7,000, $8,000.

Ben: Whether you're talking weapons or anything like that it's really an investment and that's what's wonderful that we're able to have these things that whether they have provenance to the fort or the fort's era, it is really cool to be able to have these and be able to present them and preserve them so that hopefully 150 years down the line, hopefully we're not the only ones that have something but in case we are.

Mike: Well you-- when you stop and look at what you know a museum does is uh basically I think they're all for the most part doing an excellent job because you just mentioned 100-- and will they be here for 150 years? Well they've been around for 150 sometimes 200 years and they're still in fairly, you know, decent shape as long as they don't deteriorate anymore, I see no problem. But, you know if you neglect them or don't take care of them they can't take care of themselves, so it's got up to you to basically you know observe and react to whatever's it's affliction may be.

Ben: And that's where you come in.

Mike: Well, we try.

Ben: And I'd say you do a fantastic job.

Mike: Well thanks.

Elizabeth: So there are a lot of soldiers on the fort. Are most of the artifacts from soldiers or?

Mike: Well I wish I could say yes, but this was a military fort for 19 years and a working cattle and horse ranch for nearly 80 years. So most of the stuff that we have in the collection, I'm kind of repeating myself, but most of the stuff in the collection is from the time period, but doesn't really have provenance. The things that we do know that were here when the fort was active are very few and far between. And that kind of spills over into the archeology end of it because the farm was after the fort so anything you find is going to be on top in when you dig down or when an archaeological dig is performed you're going to dig down and that's you're going to find all the stuff from the farm period first. Because I know one area that I was told was basically a dump for the farm period and it was basically right in the area where the block house is. So if you were to go over there you're going to probably find a lot of farm objects. And I said 216,000 objects I can pretty safely say 170,000 are archeology. And of that probably less than 10,000 maybe 15,000 are military objects.

Ben: A lot of them are animal bones aren't they?

Mike: Yeah, we have a lot of they-- the old settler store was turned into a-- that it was removed but the foundation for the basement was still there. And basically-- actually it wasn't the settler store it was a settler residence during the farm period when they would slaughter and butcher, a lot of the bones were just shoved over into the-- it was used as basically a dump for the for the carcasses and skeletons of cattle, sheep, chickens. We have a lot of bird bones and most of them are chicken.

Ben: But again that falls under the archeology and has to be cataloged.

Mike: Yeah we tried to cut a cut a corner. I remember when I first got here, two other rangers and I were doing backlog, Museum backlog. We had nearly 60,000 items that were on backlog so our job was to do as much as we could that summer. Lo and behold we got-- every three of us got everything done except about five or six thousand bones. They were in a museum type fiberglass barrel in storage our boss thought that-- which is which is perfectly legal, thought that we could since they were all in bags we could bag-- you know a catalog them by a bag. In other words weigh them and catalog them as just you know bovine or a bird or whatever. Until we three discovered that each and every bone had a field site number on it. Well that that took away the bag of bones and then we had to catalog every single individual bone. So it took a little longer.

Elizabeth: So I work in the schoolhouse when I do living history for events at fort and a lot of people come in and ask me questions about the women and children on the fort. Do you have a lot of artifacts that belong to women and children?

Mike: Yes. I mean I can't-- again I can't say that some of the clothing that we have we have a wedding dress which was basically donated I'm pretty sure it had no provenance to the fort but it is a good study item to you know let's check out hand stitching and the material itself. And then we have several other undergarments ladies undergarments that you know still are in pretty good shape. As far as children, we have quite a few toys. We don't know some of these toys could have been from the late 1800s when the fort had already closed and some of the children of the owners of the ranch you know we can't really date them, because the spread of the way toys were manufactured back then went a long ways. You know it covered a lot of time or period. Basically what I brought was some call it China I'm thinking more so of just basically ceramic but they're miniatures. There's a little dish with a broken section there's a pitcher that's probably about two inches high, has a chunk of it gone out of the main body. I also brought a doll's leg obviously broken off of a doll. And you can tell they're all pretty much made of the same material, some sort of ceramic. And I brought an original slate or chalkboard for writing maybe after 1866 the Army was forced or the rules and regulations stated that all forts will provide a school for children of the fort. Now an officer, maybe he thinks that his child could get a better education and it's perfectly okay for him to send that child back East for maybe a better education. But there were very few enlisted men out here that had children. The Army's a little more lax on this as the years go by so by the late 1870s it's been relaxed just a little bit. They still had to provide a school and this would have-- could have been in something used where I'm not sure the provenance of this I could through the museum program find out where it came from. I know the ceramic pitcher, plate, and doll's leg they're archeology. They came from here but we just aren't exactly sure what time and when they were you know-- I know when they were found but I just don't know what time and whether it was a child of the fort or again the ranch period. So that's a question that'll probably never get answered.

Ben: That's the tough thing that working with you and working with our artifact series on social media is sort of discerning whether it's Fort Era or Ranch Era for some of these things is very difficult.

Mike: If this was only a ranch we'd know. If this was only a military fort we'd know. But I can remember when we were doing the backlog, we ran across a watering bit and in archeology and it hadn't been cataloged yet. And it was the uh toggle type-- well actually no I should say it was a watering bit toggle and that dates Civil War. That was a big plus. We also found half a valve guide for a Ford tractor. So you know and that's probably 18 or I mean 1940s. So we could pretty well differentiate you know between the valve guide and the watering bit toggle. So that was pretty cut and dry there but a lot of times that you don't get that luxury.

Ben: For those listening and for those who might want to help out a little bit more what are some ways that those in the area might be able to help out say with volunteering or how can someone from a distance help out with some of the things you deal with?

Mike: Well a few years ago I think 2019 I knew a young man that was named Ben Long that came out here and the first thing that management had him do was help me do inventories. Now that is a lovely job. When you're trying to trying to account for 12,000 items, 12,000 plus items. And so we're always you know in need of a volunteer to come out and help with the inventory. The plus is you get to go into areas where you don't normally get to go. Like the vault for one thing. The vault has nearly about 9,000 items in it and they're not on display. So they're just sitting there in probably the best climate controlled room in the whole park. Yeah we could we always, you know aside from volunteering for soldiers or volunteering for school teachers or volunteering for cooks and laundresses and things like that, you know there's always-- for the type that doesn't really want to dress out we've always got room for you to inventory or something else with the Museum. So let us know!

Ben: And for those listening if you want to see some of the items that are in the vault, most of the items that are featured on our ArtiFact series on social media come from there. So a lot of those items and maybe we'll even feature some of the items we have here soon so you can see those a little better. But yeah, there's a lot in there and like you said they're in the most ideal situation so they can be preserved. And do we rotate some of those things in and out sometimes?

Mike: Well the go-to idea right now by Museum management is things-- they really want things on display to be reproduction so that we can remove the original. But that's hard to do because sometimes you just can't come up with a reproduction item that you maybe have on display. But I've tried to move most of the original items, original cataloged items, into the museum-- what we call the museum rooms which are rooms on display but they're sealed as opposed to living history rooms which are rooms that people, volunteers and staff can go in and give the visitor a slice of life of whatever they're portraying. An officer's wife, a school teacher, a surgeon, you know.

Ben: Well thanks for coming on, thanks for sharing your perspective and a bit of the work you do and thank you for the work you do and.

Mike: Thanks for having me come on board here and tell about it. I won't say it's a thankless job I mean I get thanked for a lot for various things. But it comes few and far between. But you know.

Ben: It's a behind the scenes kind of job

Mike: That's right that's well put, yeah.

Ben: Alright well thank you.

Mike: Thank you folks.

[Whoosh]

Ben: Alright well we hope you enjoyed listening to that episode we certainly had a blast interviewing Mike and hearing his perspective. If you don't already follow us on social media we are on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and also be sure to check out our website, we have a lot of great resources on there. Also as mentioned in the episode our series on social media ArtiFact is where we feature a lot of the items that aren't on display and are preserved in the vault there so be sure to check that out.

Elizabeth: If you're already following us, check out Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. They have a lot of great content and they kind of share the same story as Fort Larned.

Ben: In their story there they cover the November 1864 Massacre by Chivington and his men. Very somber site but definitely important for our history. So we want to thank you again for listening be sure to leave us a review and we hope you have a wonderful day.

Elizabeth: We'll see you next time on Footsteps: The Fort Larned National Historic Site Podcast

[Footsteps outro music plays]