The Park City Library’s Local Speaker Series will excavate the town’s mining history when Dalton Gackle speaks on Tuesday.
The presentation, “Life About Town in Park City’s Mining Days,” will start at 4 p.m. at the Jim Santy Auditorium, 1255 Park Ave.
“It’s really nice the library has a speaker series, and it’s cool for me to be a part of that community program,” Gackle said. “The library offered me free rein of what I wanted to talk about. I offered to give a more general overview of Park City’s history or a more specific subject, and they felt people would enjoy a general talk about the mining days.”
Gackle, who has overseen and managed the Park City Museum’s Hal Compton Research Library as its research, digital services and social media coordinator for the past six years, will give a talk based on a longer presentation he has already prepared.
“A couple of years ago, I wrote a book (“Images of America: Park City”), and a lot of it’s based on that book,” he said. “When putting together the specific talk for the library, I made it a slightly shorter lecture.”
As the museum’s research library coordinator, Gackle — who is in charge of historical photos, oral and written histories and is tasked with processing, digitizing and making available the museum’s manuscript and visual collections to patrons and researchers — is surrounded by an abundance of resources, some of which he will bring to the presentation.
“I will have a lot of great photos, so it won’t just be me talking,” he said.
One of the photos Gackle may show took him by surprise.
The photo taken in the 1920s, captured the building at 508 Main St., which is now Kaneo restaurant.
“(It shows something) I hadn’t seen before of something that I didn’t know was there,” he said.
The first thing Gackle noticed was the rear part of the building.
“The lower level extends back, and there is also a metal shed attached to the back,” he said. “Both of those pieces are part of the historic building, which I did not realize. Today, that lower level has a second level added on top of it, and the shed was required to remain when they did the expansion, though it is wood now.”
Gackle also noticed another business adjacent to the shed, which displays the 504 Main St. address, although it’s set more on Swede Alley.
“It was an early auto garage for Park City that I had not known about previously,” he said.
Gackle has loved history since he was a child.
“I loved museums, especially history museums, while growing up,” he said. “I would spend hours reading every single thing in the exhibits, whereas others may just skim through or enjoy certain aspects.”
Gackle pursued his love of history and graduated from Iowa State University with degrees in journalism and history.
“Then I decided to further my schooling and work in museums, so I got a master’s degree from Indiana University Purdue University of Indianapolis in public history,” he said. “I wanted to spend time on historic sites doing historic preservation and working with historic archives.”
Working at the Park City Museum allows Gackle to tell Park City’s history in many ways.
“All of us do that sort of thing at the museum, but I’m able to do that more frequently because I work with people on a daily basis,” he said
Gackle is also responsible for writing and editing “The Way We Were” articles, which recaps Park City’s history, for The Park Record newspaper.
“Having that content go out is an interesting thing for the community, I hope,” he said. “We do hear a lot from the community once those articles go out. So, it’s a nice responsibility to tell interesting stories and keep people engaged with the history of this town.”
Park City Library’s Local Speaker Series: ‘Life About Town in Park City’s Mining Days’ by Dalton Gackle
- When: 4 p.m., Tuesday, May 27
- Where: Park City Library’s Jim Santy Auditorium, 1255 Park Ave.
- Cost: Free
- Web: tinyurl.com/5n94s4vj
