Heritage Court 2006
Alba Arndt
Alba Arndt’s two-story brick home in Hailey, shaded by a hundred-year-old pear tree, has provided an oasis of stability as the valley around her has gone through rapid transformation.
She’s seen the old Friedman general store, which had replaced tent stores, give way to Paul’s Market, then Atkinson’s and finally Albertson’s chain supermarket.
She’s seen the old Hailey high school go through a couple of reincarnations, the latest a state-of-the-art facility near the mouth of Quigley Canyon.
She’s seen the fields that once surrounded Hailey fill up with homes as Hailey’s population has burgeoned to 7,000 residents.
Chrystal Harper
Chrystal Harper doesn’t need a placard to tell her about many of the items on display in the Bellevue Historical Museum.
She donated the antique wood cook stove now sitting in a restored cabin on the property.
The gray ruffled wedding dress was her mother Lizzie’s when she married Will Uhrig on July 3, 1890, in Hailey.
The butter churn, which Harper still enjoys pumping, was her nephew’s. And she and her brother played with the toy plows, miniature sewing machine and cast iron stove sitting in the display case 94 years ago. Yup, 94 years ago.
Chrystal Uhrig Harper has been a part of life in the Wood River Valley for…
Merline Farnworth
Merline Farnworth’s roots stretch deep into the reddish brown soil of Carey.
Her great uncle Archie Billingsley was among the first white settlers to enter the valley, arriving with a large herd of cattle in 1879 shortly after the Bannock Indian War.
And her great aunt Jane Billingsley offered her home as the area’s first schoolhouse until a log schoolhouse with a dirt roof opened the following year.
All great fodder for a 77-year-old geneaological buff whose identity is wrapped up as much in her ancestors as her own children.
Bebe Haemmerle
It was her knowledge of German, which she learned growing up in Milwaukee, Wis., that introduced her to the love of her life and the home of her dreams.
“I was sitting in the Challenger Inn on vacation and the Austrian ski instructors heard me laughing at the stories they were swapping. They told Florian, ‘That girl speaks German,’ and that was it,” said Haemmerle, 83.
Florian Haemmerle was smitten with Beatrice Ott—so much so that Sun Valley’s General Manager Pappy Rogers picked up the month-long tab…