Postcard from the Past: Preserving Local History One Picture at a TimePostcard from the Past:

This week’s Postcard is more personal than usual, in the fact that it relates to the history of how I ended up with all of the information and pictures appearing in this column for the past dozen or more years. 

Thanks for your indulgence. Enjoy.

“Preserving local history one picture at a time” has been the life-long goal of Dick Perue, Upper North Platte River Valley historian and Wyoming’s senior hall of fame newspaper publisher, editor, printer, photographer, reporter, paperboy and often janitor.

Over the past 70 years, the 87-year-old collector has preserved thousands of photos, negatives, manuscripts, news items, books, printing plates, pamphlets and all sorts of scraps of paper of historical significance in what is known as the Dick Perue/Bob Martin collection.

Now, Perue plans to share a portion of this collection with the public, beginning with the annual meeting of the Grand Encampment Museum (GEM) on Sept. 30 at 4 p.m. in the Doc Culleton Building, during which he will present a video and slideshow program featuring several hundreds of the pictures which have been preserved over the years.

Perue helped establish both the Grand Encampment and Saratoga Museums, and over the years, has served on both boards as well as contributed extensive historical material to each from the original Bob Martin collection, as well as what he has added.

The hour-long pictorial history program will follow the GEM’s annual meeting and board of directors election. A presentation of annual reports, new and old business, refreshments and chatting will conclude the evening.

I have also launched a program to digitize the collection and will present electronic copies to both the Saratoga and Grand Encampment museums, as well as the original material. At the present rate, in order to accomplish this, I will have to live another 20 years. However, I do have a lot of help. – Dick Perue