ROCK SPRINGS – Bringing some of the most interesting residents in the history of Rock Springs back to life has been a goal of the Rock Springs Historical Museum. A project which has been years in the making is starting to take shape as the Cemetery Walking Tour is coming to life.

Several years ago, the Rock Springs Historical Museum started the idea of putting together a tour of the cemetery that would be a similar to the Historic Downtown Walking Tour.

The Historic Downtown Walking Tour is a self-guided tour which takes people back in time and introduces them to some of the most historic buildings and places in the downtown area. It starts at the museum where a brochure is given to the person or party. The brochure then guides them to around 50 stops, giving them a brief history at each stop.

At that time, the idea of doing a similar type of tour at the Rock Springs Municipal Cemetery was hatched. A committee started work on the tour but it lost steam.

In April of 2014, the museum once again resurrected the tour and asked board member Cindy Nelson to head a committee to bring it back to life. Over the summer, the committee took several walks through the cemetery and started developing a list of historic people and stories to spotlight.

The committee came up with a list of approximately 30 stops and has now started the process of gathering the histories. At the Wednesday meeting of the Museum Board, Nelson said the committee is starting to put those histories together and will soon be forwarding the information to the writer who will get the brochure ready.

After the stories are typed and go through a couple of proofreadings, Nelson said they will start developing a brochure similar to the downtown walking tour.

Every year, Rock Springs City Departments start compiling a list of budget requests for the city to consider. Each year, the museum picks a project and the project’s estimated cost is the museum’s budget request.

Two year’s ago, the museum’s request was for a monument to honor those killed in the Chinese Massacre. With all the permits needed for the monument as well as the other details surrounding the monument, it continued into last year. Since it did, the museum did not ask for any money from the city last year as they continued to focus on the monument.

With permits in place and the final details coming together with the monument, the board is open for a new project in 2015,

With the committee making as much progress as they have on the cemetery tour, Museum Coordinator Bob Nelson and the board decided to make this year’s project the printing of the brochures for the cemetery tour. The board unanimously voted to send that to the council as its budget request.

Cindy Nelson said with the last pieces being put in place, the committee is reaching the end. However, she said another committee will start working on a kick-off event for the tour and said anyone interested in participating should get involved. They are still shooting for a late September or early October date for the kickoff. There has been some talk on having it in early October on the day the Sweetwater County Commissioners received Rock Springs’ request to become a township. The museum has been avoiding doing it around Halloween because it’s not meant to be scary, it is meant to give residents a deeper history of Rock Springs.

Cindy Nelson explained that while they want to have a kick-off event to launch the tour, there is also interest in possibly making it an annual event to highlight the tour.