Heritage Court 2005
Lula shoemaker
Lula Shoemaker never moved more than a few miles from the farm where she was born and raised.
But the world has sure been on the move around her.
In her 87 years of living in the Bellevue area, Shoemaker has seen the school house she learned her ABCs torn down to make way for the Bellevue City Park. She’s seen a few cow pastures up north transformed into a world class destination ski resort. And she’s seen fish runs so abundant you could spear the fish nearly disappear.
Shoemaker, one of four women named to the 2005 Heritage Court, was born Lula Barker on her family farm between Bellevue and Gannett…
orpha smith mecham
Orpha Smith Mecham’s stretch way back to B.C. - Before Carey, that is.
Her grandparents were the first to settle in the Carey area—back in 1880 when it was a valley of tall thick meadow grass.
And Mecham has been in the thick of what’s come since—from the one-room schoolhouses she taught in to the times she and her brothers drove cars between the electric poles strung up down the middle of Carey’s main street as if they were slalom gates.
On June 26 Mecham and three other women will be inducted into the Blaine County Heritage Court—a payback for their role in the history of the Wood River Valley.
anita gray
Anita Gray doesn’t need to stroll down the hallway at the Sun Valley Lodge to check out the pictures of Hollywood celebrities and other legends who frequented Sun Valley during its formative years. She’s got her own pictures.
Ernest Hemingway taught her to shoot. Gary Cooper used to come to her home for dinner. And she used to share cocktails with Norma Shearer.
“I wasn’t much into the stars—I thought they were fake,” said Gray, now 83. “But Gary Cooper was a darling. The kids were watching a Gary Cooper movie when he first showed up. They looked at him, then looked at the TV screen and their jaw dropped…
gladys mcatee
While movie stars were sunbathing in the glamour of the new Sun Valley resort, Gladys McAtee was scratching out a life the hard way.
She peeled the bark off logs as she and her husband Van built their home in Ketchum. She rode on a hay rake as she helped clear 350 acres of sagebrush out Croy Canyon. And she endured childbirth with only a hot towel for an anesthetic.
“What did we have to holler about? We were happy all our lives. We never had a lot of money, but we never went hungry and we never wore rags,” said McAtee, now 91.
McAtee, one of four women honored in this year’s Blaine County Historical Museum’s Heritage Court, helped pioneer a valley that was…