Mammoth museum exhibit in Utah gets renewed interest with new NHL team name

By Amy Nay

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    FAIRVIEW, Utah (KSTU) — The new name for Utah’s NHL team is breathing some new life into an old museum in a small central Utah town.

Students from Fairview Elementary went on a special field trip to the Fairview Museum of History & Art this past week. Fourth-grade teacher Selena Shelley says she does every year, but this year, it had renewed interest.

A main attraction of the museum is a replica of a fossilized mammoth skeleton that was discovered just up a nearby canyon 38 years ago.

“It’s really fun because they’re excited to see the mammoth. It’s a good time,” she said of their field trips.

But even more so after the state’s NHL team recently announced its official name moving forward — the Utah Mammoth — and even showed a clip of the museum in their online announcement.

“I think that’s cool how they named it after this, and Fairview is famous for something now!” one student said with a laugh.

“We’ve loved the museum for a long time, but I think it’s exciting that it’s brought some attention to our little town,” Shelley said. “It’s awesome.”

Some kids we spoke to were extra excited with the nationwide attention on the NHL’s newest team.

“I think it’s nice, because they had different names, so they did a vote and all that on social media and people voted the Mammoth, and we got it from down in Fairview in the canyon,” one student said.

Local students go on a scavenger hunt — something guides say you can do too in your visit to learn all kinds of facts about this great find and many other things, like a Native American arrowhead collection that was donated to the museum.

Kathy Giles, a retired teacher who’s now a volunteer guide at the museum and a member of the board, says this place is a real local treasure — and the secret seems to be out.

“We see a lot [of tourists]. We’ve had them from Africa, Australia, all over. There’s a lot of people that come here,” she said. “Especially in the summer, we get a lot from out of town, out of state, out of country, and they’re always impressed — really impressed.”

The gift shop is fully stocked, and some cute little plush mammoths are for sale, with proceeds benefitting the museum that has a donation-only entrance fee.

“Upstairs, we have a lot of things, a lot of art,” Giles said.

At the base of the mammoth, there’s a special plaque with pictures taken when this discovery was made just up the canyon from this spot, when a construction company was rebuilding the dam at the Huntington Reservoir in August of 1988.

“They’d come across these bones, and the more they dug, the more bones they found,” Giles said.

At an elevation of 9,000 feet, the fossil was the highest discovered at the time and preserved in ice-cold mud, allowing experts to learn more about the ancient species — the Columbian mammoth. But visitors may be surprised to learn that to preserve this find for future generations, the mammoth seen at the museum is a replica.

“These are the bones that the city paid to have put here when we built this building, too — the Horizon Building — because the actual one is stored over in Price,” Giles said.

“I think it’s pretty cool. It’s big! I think it’s pretty cool that the hockey club is named after it now,” one student said.

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