- Frontier Homestead State Park Museum in Cedar City attracts about 12,500 visitors yearly.
- Park Manager Michael Stewart highlighted its blend of education and interaction for all ages.
- The museum showcases pioneer history with historic artifacts and hands-on activities for visitors.
CEDAR CITY — Frontier Homestead State Park Museum in Cedar City is easy to miss if you are just driving by on your way to southern Utah's national parks.
About 12,500 people visited Frontier Homestead in the last year, according to Utah State Park visitation numbers.
That places it in the bottom five of all Utah State Parks when looking at visitation.
However, Park Manager Michael Stewart believed people who stop there quickly realize it is much more than a roadside museum.
"There's so much to see and do," said Stewart. "It's the perfect blend of education and also interaction. So it's appealing to people of all ages."
Located just off the main road in Cedar City, the museum focuses on the pioneer history of Iron County and southern Utah.
Inside and outside the park are old buildings, wagons, farming equipment, stagecoaches, a historic cabin, a schoolhouse and even a replica blast furnace highlighting the area's iron mining history.
"Being born here in Cedar City, it's really important to me. This is part of my heritage, and I'm honored to show others what this park is all about," said Stewart.
Stewart has only been the park manager for a few months, but he said the museum represents the history of the entire region.
"People that are from Cedar City, Iron County and even southern Utah, this is like stepping back into what their ancestors did. Very important, I think, to preserve and be a good steward of that history."
One of the museum's biggest attractions is its extensive collection of historic transportation artifacts, including old stagecoaches and early automobiles.
"It's an extensive collection, one of the biggest in the region and also in the state," he said with a smile. "The railroad came to Cedar City in 1923, and that became the jumping-off point to the national parks."
The museum is also building a replica of an old gas station that Stewart feels a lot of old-timers in the area will remember.
"That's a recreation of the Twin Pine gas station, which is the first gas station here in Cedar City, Utah," he said.
Outside, visitors can walk among old farming equipment and learn how difficult life was for early settlers.
"We take for granted how easy it is today, and then you come out here and see how hard it was for the pioneers to break the ground and grow their crops, and you get an appreciation for what they had to go through," he said.
The museum also features one of Utah's oldest surviving cabins.
"The wood cabin there came from Parowan. It was erected in 1851. It's one of the oldest still-standing structures in Utah," said Stewart.
Inside that one-room cabin, Stewart said, 24 children were born.
"It's kind of crazy to think about when you look at the houses we have today compared to what they had then," he said.
Hands-on activities are also a major part of the experience.
Visitors can try washing clothes using old washboards and hand wringers.
"We have school groups here, and this is one of their favorite activities is to do laundry like the pioneers did," said Stewart.
Another exhibit recreates a pioneer schoolhouse, complete with living quarters for the teacher upstairs.
"This is what the students would have learned back in that pioneer era," said Stewart while looking at an old chalkboard.
The park also highlights the region's iron mining history with a replica blast furnace built to the specifications of the original furnace used during the Iron Mission in the 1850s.
For Stewart, the museum offers visitors a chance to disconnect from modern life and appreciate how difficult frontier life really was.
"Sometimes people say it would have been easier to live back then, but come here for a day, and that might change your mind," he said with a laugh.
The park hosts several events throughout the year, including Sheep to Shawl, Iron Mission Days and weekly children's storytime events.
Stewart said many visitors return again and again because of the feeling the museum creates.
"There's patrons that come regularly just because they like to step back in time," he said.
One visitor Stewart recently met traveled from Hawaii to visit the museum.
"I met a woman recently who was here, from Maui on vacation, and she and her husband come here every time they come over from Maui, just because they love feeling like they're stepping back onto a frontier homestead," said Stewart.
He believed that feeling may ultimately be what makes the park special.
"That's exactly what this park provides," he said. "It is an opportunity to leave your stresses of daily life behind and see what it was like to live back then."
