Heritage Week is the week long celebration of the Western Mining & Railroad Museum. Helper is NOT
your stereo-typical Utah town! In fact, we are the black sheep of Utah --
and mostly proud of it! Helper has a unique and colorful history of railroads,
coal mining, bordelleos, riots, and outlaws! It is a fact that there were
more bordellos and brothels in Helper than there were churches and Butch
Cassidy robbed the Castle Gate payroll here.
Teply Graphic Arts & Publishing, LLC (TGAP) has
been a proud sponsor, event coordinator, marketing agency, participant and
gun-toting outlaw of this event for the last four years -- but it has grown
to a size where TGAP can not be a 90% sponsor/underwriter anymore! However,
that is a saga for print elsewhere!
Heritage Week has gained national coverage
and notoriety to the point that True West Magazine named
Helper, Utah as a top western town for the last two years. In 2006, we were #10. In 2007, we jumped to #1. Where are going
for 2008? Only time will tell...does True West offer a #1A? |
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A lot of the credit goes to museum director SueAnn Martell's efforts
in resurrecting and reviving Helper's history. She is also spearheading
a much needed museum expansion -- which will also make the museum handicapped
accessible. In fact, she just won an award from the Utah Humanities Council
for her historic presevation efforts!
Her next major effort is to hijack a
time machine and stalk Butch Cassidy -- only to find the Castle Gate Payroll
gold and maybe steal his horse, and his guns, and have him autograph a photo
or two dozen! |
Every year there are a collection of events ranging
from Cemetery and Haunted Tours and guest lectures right up to the big finale
where we shut down Main Street and have members of the Balanced Rock Regulators shoot up the street with
Hollywood style smoky blanks. We also have food vendors and a merchant's
row and a photo contest. Heritage Week grows every year and is rapidly becoming
Helper's biggest event!
This year we are adding a Bordello
Ball -- where "soiled doves" will roam amongst the dinner
guests. This event will be a fund-raiser for the museum and the estemeed
guest speaker will be True West Magazine's and Westerns'
Channel celebrity Bob Boze Bell! Dinner guests
will be treated to a dinner prepared in the style of the old Helper saloons
and brothels. After the dinner an auction will further help to promote and
help the museum with its operations and expansion.
Click
here if you want to download a free banner poster of 2006 Heritage Week.
It is in an Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) and is 4.2 megs in size
which will take approximately 18 minutes to download with a phone line and
will be a much faster with a broadband connection.
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