Railroad Songs & Stories to be presented at Fort Caspar

Fort Caspar Museum Association is pleased to announce its Spring Lunch and Learn program. It will be held on Saturday, May 13th and will feature musical historian Bill Rossiter who will present "The Magic Carpet Made of Steel: Songs and Stories of the Railroad."

Through tunes and yarns, he will explore what railroads meant to the West and to Americans in general, from both the distant and the not-so-distant past. Songs will be accompanied by banjo, guitar, and autoharp. This program is sponsored in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council as part of its ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours program.

Rossiter taught literature and folklore for twenty-five years at Flathead Valley Community College and at the University of Montana, retiring in 1999. He currently rambles around Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado singing songs of the railroad, heroes and outlaws, the Irish immigration, the frontier, the Civil War, cowboys and sodbusters, mines and miners, the Great Depression, and other eras of American history.

An optional lunch will be served at 12:00 pm, followed by Mr. Rossiter's performance at 1:00 pm. Reservations are required for the lunch and must be made by May 10th (call 235-8462). The cost for lunch is $5 for FCMA members and $8 for nonmembers; the lecture is free with lunch or free with paid Museum admission. We will feature a buffet of Qdoba Fresh Mexican food, dessert, and beverages.

The Wyoming Humanities Council provides public humanities-based programs in partnership with local organizations and is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities with additional support from private donors and the Wyoming Legislature.

Fort Caspar Museum's hours in May are 8:00 am to 5:00 pm daily. Admission prices are $3 for adults; $2 for youth (ages 13-18 years); FREE for children (12 years and younger) and for FCMA members. For more information, call the Museum at 307-235-8462, or visit our website at www.fortcasparwyoming.com. Fort Caspar Museum is located at 4001 Fort Caspar Road.