Sheridan Community Land Trust and the Tongue River Valley Community Center are excited to announce that the Explore History program will be coming to Dayton beginning in February.

Explore History launched this fall as a monthly series featuring talks, tours and programs created by SCLT and hosted at The Hub on Smith in Sheridan. Each month has featured a subject of Sheridan County history – from dude ranches to life in our former coal-mining communities to the women who influenced southeastern Sheridan County.

Guest speakers help bring the county’s past alive and all attendees are invited into an open dialog where they can ask questions, and importantly, share memories of the experiences they’ve had calling Sheridan County home.

It’s that collaborative spirit between presenters and attendees that interested TRVCC Assistant Director Lacie Schwend, who said TRVCC’s “most well-attended outings have had a history component to them.”

Schwend said a past TRVCC outing on SCLT’s Black Diamond Byway tour was “well attended and got rave reviews” while many of the attendees who grew up in and around the coal-mining communities “were able to add personal stories to the tour.”

For SCLT Historical Program Manager Carrie Edinger, those stories are the jewels mined from the minds of program attendees. “It’s always exciting to hear the stories and memories shared by the people who lived our local history. Those moments are part of the reason why we created Explore History and when they are shared, stories can be preserved so they aren’t forgotten.”

That’s important to Schwend, too, who said these programs are for people of all ages and experiences. “There is no person alive who would not benefit from learning the history of where they live.”

Explore History at TRVCC programs will be held the third Tuesday of each month at TRVCC in Dayton. They will begin at 10:30 a.m. and run until about 12 noon. All Explore History programs are free to attend and open to the public.

The Explore History at TRVCC schedule is as follows:

  • February 15 – The History of Water in the Semiarid Southeastern Sheridan County
  • March 15 – Big Goose Creek Virtual Tour
  • April 19 – Women Who Influenced Southeastern Sheridan County

More information and full descriptions of each program are available at https://sheridanclt.org/events.

Explore History is generously funded by The Next50 Initiative.

For more information about Sheridan Community Land Trust, please visit https://sheridanclt.org.

For more information about Tongue River Valley Community Center, please visit https://trvcc.org/.