History of the Museum
The front enterance to the C.T. Hurst Museum in Hurst Hall, displayed is a collection of different artifacts from the museum collection as well as some information about Hurst himself.
The C.T. Hurst Museum is located in Gunnison, Colorado, on the campus of Western Colorado University (WCU). The C.T. Hurst Museum is a great source of cultural and archaeological knowledge of the heritage of Gunnison Country. The C.T. Hurst Museum’s small exhibit space, archive and curation room, archaeological offices, and wet laboratories are housed in the Hurst building on WSCU’s campus. The C.T. Hurst Museum collection encompasses artifacts and associated notes from fieldwork beginning in the 1930’s with C.T. Hurst, to current field school materials recovered from the Mountaineer and Tenderfoot Sites in Gunnison, directed by Mark Stiger since 1990.
The C.T. Hurst Museum contains material from numerous significant collections including one made by C.T. Hurst from his fieldwork in the 1930s and 1940s. The Hurst collection provides evidence of the earliest corn farming in Colorado, and artifact assemblages from early Folsom and Windust occupations in Colorado. The designation of these sites range from being on the State Register to eligible and recommended for the State Register. Another significant collection in the museum is from The Mountaineer and Tenderfoot sites excavated by Stiger since the early 2000s and also contains evidence for some of the earliest people in the area and is on the State Registrar of Historic Places (State Register 3/9/1994, 5GN.1835).
In the early 1930s, C.T. Hurst, came to what was then known as Western State College as a professor of zoology. His shift to archaeological research was the result, at least in part, of a loan to Western of a private collection of Southwest pottery and other materials, which he then studied, curated, and exhibited. In 1935 he and Gunnison Mayor H.W. Endner, helped establish the Colorado Archaeological Society and began publishing Southwestern Lore. In the late 1930s Hurst and Endner, and the Colorado Archaeological Society, established the first
archaeology museum at WCU. Hurst initially conducted fieldwork in the late 1930s at a Folsom site in the San Luis Valley, he then later moved to a cave site in the same region. Later in his career Hurst worked on the Uncompahgre Plateau at Tabeguache Cave (State Register 9/11/1996, 5MN.868), Dolores Cave (State Register 9/11/1996, 5MN.915), and Cottonwood Cave (State Register 9/11/1996, 5MN.519). These sites were occupied by many peoples, including Ancestral Puebloan, Fremont, and Gateway, and contained early evidence of farming in the region. Among the many artifacts from these sites are numerous perishable items such as corncobs, baskets, yucca sandals, deer hides, a split-twig figurine, and many bone fragments which are now part of the Hurst Museum collection.
Additional items in the C.T. Hurst Museum include various collections donated over the years. Such as the Peterson collection, which consists of partial human skeletal remains of about twenty individuals and ceramic vessels from the Durango area. Provenience data is minimal to non-existent. Peterson collected these materials back in the 1930s and when he passed away, Peterson’s brother, a Western alum, donated them to the museum. In August of 1948, Hurst took a leave from Western to study museum curation at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. While in Cambridge he became ill with pneumonia and in January of 1949 passed away, leaving the management of the museum uncertain. Between the 1960s and 1970s, the collection was boxed up and put into storage. For the next couple of decades the collection was passed around from one building to another, moving from one storage room or basement to another.
In the 1970s, John Gooding of the Colorado Department of Highways and adjunct at Henderson Museum CU-Boulder obtained a loan of Hurst Uncompahgre materials from WCU. With no archaeologist on the faculty, the college president approved a short-term loan of the artifacts and all field records to be housed at the Henderson Museum. Upon being hired at Western State in 1989, Stiger began an assessment of the archaeological collection, now stored in a large shared space in Hurst. Among other things, he was able to track down and retrieve the materials borrowed in the 1970s. It is unclear how, but the Hurst Uncompahgre artifacts and field notes were being stored in cardboard boxes in a garage in Boulder. In 2001, the Hurst building was expanded with the construction of an additional wing. At that time a space specifically designed for the collection was built, and is the current location of the Hurst Museum. The C.T. Hurst Museum now serves as a center of object-based learning and as a resource for WCU students, faculty, staff, and the Gunnison Valley community. The archaeological collection at the C.T. Hurst Museum contains items that provide significant opportunities for students and staff to learn about the geographic, cultural, historic, prehistoric, and natural environment of the Western Slope. The C.T. Hurst Museum is primarily interested in collections from the cultural, historic, prehistoric, and natural environment of the Western Slope, with a specialized focus in the Gunnison Basin. Records and artifacts are accepted with the understanding that the primary usage is research by students, scholars, and other authorized persons.
Clarence Thomas Hurst
Hurst was born in Kentucky in 1895, the only child of Dr. Alexander L. Hurst (1857-1909) and Margaret K. Hurst (1867-?). The Hurst family moved to Fruita from Kentucky between the 1900 census and when Dr. Hurst first appears in the 1905 Polk City Directory for Grand Junction. They lived in this Queen Anne Free Classic style house that also served as Dr. Hurst’s office. When Dr. Hurst died in 1909, he was buried in his hometown in Kentucky. Margaret continued living in the house until at least 1916, whereupon she likely remarried and changed her name.
Hurst moved to California shortly after he graduated from Fruita Union High School, presumably to attend college. He studied hard, earned his doctorate, and became a Professor of Zoology and Archaeology at the state college. There he married Blanche Hendricks (1891-1972), who herself had three years of college, a not yet very common achievement for a woman. Like his father before him, Clarence died in his early fifties. Blanche does not seem to have remarried, and the couple are buried side by side in Gunnison.
Hurst was one of the few professional archaeologists at the time in the United States but first and foremost he was a zoologist, having received his Ph.D. in that field at the University of California in 1926. After teaching zoology at Mills College for two years, he went to Western State College of Colorado at Gunnison where he remained until his death. After 1930 he was Dean of the Graduate School at Western State and after 1937 head of the Division of Natural Science and Mathematics. In 1933 he had an appointment as a Research Associate in Zoology at the University of California.
This photo from the Lower Valley Heritage Room in the Fruita Civic Center was among those taken by Minnie Hiatt as a series of Fruita business and household photos in the fall of 1913. It shows Clarence Thomas Hurst, age eighteen, standing in front of his family home at the southwest corner of East Aspen Avenue and Elm Street in Fruita
It was about this time, while working on zoological research and teaching zoology as well as performing many extra administrative chores for his college, that Dr. Hurst started to become an archaeologist. His decision came about as the result of a loan to Western State College of a large private collection of prehistoric pottery and artifacts, mostly collected in the Southwest. Dr. Hurst took the responsibility of seeing that the collection was adequately preserved and exhibited, which led to a thorough study of Southwestern prehistory. By 1935 he had become aware of the need to protect antiquities from irresponsible curio hunters. For this purpose and to further adult education in Colorado prehistory, he helped establish the Colorado Archaeological Society. Started as a local western Colorado society, it published the first issue of Southwestern Lore, the journal of the Society, in June, 1935, just two months after the Society was founded. As executive secretary and editor for the Society from its beginning until his death, Dr. Hurst was personally responsible for its stability and growth. He wrote enough to insure the continuation of the journal and alone handled the business of the Society. Always understanding and patient with "arrow-point collectors" and "pot-hunters," Dr. Hurst nevertheless left no doubt about his stand for protection of antiquities and for scientific excavation. Numerous editorials in Southwestern Lore and several speeches at State conventions reiterate this point. It is remarkable that so many remained to be taught and came back for more, -and even paid for the lessons. From nothing in 1935, the Society grew until today there are 425 paid memberships in Colorado and about 150 from other states in 1949.
At the age of 53 Dr. Hurst, a thoroughly competent archaeologist, embarked upon a program of study which would undoubtedly have broadened his perspective and further sharpened his analytic ability. Taking his first leave from teaching and administrative duties in 15 years, he left Gunnison in August, 1948 to study for six months in museums of eastern states. He spent most of his time at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, where accommodations and assistance were made available to him. However, illness in Cambridge deprived him of the scholarly pleasure he had hoped for, and when somewhat recovered, he tried to return home. Upon reaching Omaha, where his wife was staying with relatives, the seriousness of his condition became apparent and he entered the hospital on November 23 where his death occurred on January 17, 1949 from a bacterial heart infection which seemed to have been an aftermath of the pneumonia suffered in Cambridge.