Wonders of the Old West

Kids, do you want to roam the West, ride the range or explore the Great Plains--but you’ve only got the weekend and, besides, it’s hot and muggy outside in August?

Well, help for your problem is nearby. In a corner of Griffith Park near Glendale, freeway-close and completely air-conditioned, you can find two attractions to sate your appetite to be a cowpoke or Western explorer for a day.

The “Western Wonderlands” exhibit at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, running until about the time most schools start, and the museum’s permanent Children’s Discovery Gallery provide a safe, comfortable way to get beamed--as we moderns phrase it--into the Old West. Plus it can be done in costume, for those so inclined.

Donna Dickerson, the Autry’s education outreach director, has observed that kids visiting the Discovery Gallery go right for the “children’s box.” There, they can put on cowpoke outfits sized just for kids, rustle up some Western vittles on an old cookstove (the stove is real; the vittles are props), mount up in real saddles from the Old West, and even play with toys of that period.

The Discovery Gallery’s exhibit is about family life in the Old West--and kids can see that it was exciting and busy but a lot harder than modern life.

Being a cowpoke, Dickerson explains, wasn’t the only thing people did on the range 100 years ago. The Ruelas family of Arizona, whose saga is featured in the gallery , had to solve lots of problems. To get supplies in and out of town, they set up a general store. They also operated a stagecoach stop--on the fabled Butterfield Stage Line.

To deal with the health and fertility problems of their cattle, they scientifically bred them--quite ahead of their time in terms of technique. To get their kids an education, they had to maintain an extra residence in Tucson--far from the family ranch southeast of the town.

The Ruelas didn’t install electrical generators at the ranch or hook up to any power supply until long after electricity came to the West. Thus, kids can see in the exhibit what it was like to live on a ranch without a washing machine or light switches on the walls. For one thing, to do ironing, you had to heat the iron on a wood-burning stove.

There was also no TV. The dolls and toys in the exhibit--examples are available in the “children’s box”--meant something different then. Toys provided not just momentary distractions, but hours of entertainment. One kind of doll from that period could be transformed into a puppet by putting one’s hand inside the doll’s head.

The West may have been settled by families--but, as soon as railroads arrived--it was also visited by families.

In another area of the Autry, this month and next, kids can learn what it was like to visit America’s great national parks in the heyday of tourism--by train. This was back when the Winnebago and the Cherokee were people, not vehicles, back when you didn’t have to call months ahead for reservations to look at a redwood grove or canyon.

Entitled “Western Wonderlands,” the exhibit is designed to acquaint Autry visitors with the features of five famous national parks in the western U.S.: Yosemite, Yellowstone, Mesa Verde, Glacier and Grand Canyon.

Visitors enter the exhibit through a mock-up of the gates that greeted old-time park visitors when they got off the train. Youngsters of today who go through the gates will encounter a daily series of activities offered especially for them--on topics ranging from recognizing endangered species to spotting animal tracks.

BE THERE

Exhibits--Children’s Discovery Gallery and “Western Wonderlands” at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Griffith Park. Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. $7.50, $3 for children; children 2 and younger free. (213) 667-2000.