Time Travel Tuesday to Showcase Steam Engines

Program will Include Live Demonstrations

The Aspen Historical Society continues its summer 2009 Time Travel Tuesdays program with a program about steam engines titled “Carl Bergman Gets Steaming Rad!” The evening will feature the driving force behind the Holden/Marolt Mining and Ranching Museum Carl Bergman, who is also an authority on historic steam and combustion engines. The presentation will begin at 5:30 pm and will be held in the Barn and around the grounds of the Holden/Marolt on the Marolt Open Space on Aspen’s western edge. Everyone is invited to attend. Aspen Historical Society members are free and $5 is requested from non-members.

When the Museum was built as the sampling building for the Holden Lixiviation Works in the early 1890s the industrial revolution was in full swing. Global changes in the transportation, resource development and manufacturing segments of civilization were fast and dramatic and perhaps the most important facet of this wholesale change in society was the steam engine. In Aspen steam engines pumped air into the mines so workers could survive that harsh environment, ran the sawmills that provided lumber for houses and mine timbering, provided the power to operate much of the huge machinery involved in processing ore and even ran the locomotives that brought goods into and silver ore out of the booming town.

Carl Bergman knows steam. He will be taking this opportunity to share his love of this world-changing invention. Included in this program will be an explanation of how the steam engine works, what it was primarily used for and a live demonstration of an actual restored steamer from the mining era. Also on the program will be a look at early internal combustion engines – the so-called “hit and miss” engines – and a demonstration of a 1920s Gardiner Denver Buddha air compressor (it’s as big as a station wagon!).  

Time Travel Tuesdays admissions support all Society programming and educational outreach and help us continue to bring the story of our intriguing local history to everyone. For more information about Time Travel Tuesdays or any other Society programs please call the Aspen Historical Society at 970-925-3721 or go online to www.aspenhistory.org.

Date: Tuesday, July 7th, 2009.

Time: 5:30 pm.