Hunt for Treasure at the Park City Museum

X MARKS THE SPOT! Park City Museum is home to a permanent collection dedicated to our silver mining heritage and is the perfect spot for a new traveling exhibit in the Tozer Gallery entitled THE HUNT FOR TREASURE.

Not all treasure comes in the form of gold coins and jewels inside a huge chest. From the original Barbie doll in her zebra-striped bathing suit and dusty box of baseball cards in Grandma's attic to the sunken underwater treasures at the bottom of the ocean, this exhibit educates us to a variety of treasures, treasure hunters and the tricks and tools they employ.

Pirates robbed ocean-going vessels to enrich themselves and their crew. The most infamous include Blackbeard, Captains William Kidd and Jack Sparrow, and even one successful female pirate, Lady Elizabeth Killigrew who hid plundered treasure in her garden.

Not all treasure hunters are pirates. Many educated and curious men and women earned fame and/or fortune from their work and study. Howard Carter rose to fame with his discovery of King Tut's tomb and E. Lee Spence from the number of shipwrecks he discovered and explored.

Female archeologists and hunters not only searched for treasure but also educated future archeologists and hunters. Amelia Edwards, became known as the Godmother of Egyptology,  Gertrude Bell was an expert on the Middle East, Zelia Nuttal began a school to train archeologists, and even Agatha Christie, while assisting her archeologist husband in the Middle East, authored a number of books generating interest in further research of the area.

Famous fictional treasure hunters from the Silver Screen have taken us along on fantastic journeys. Do you remember what special treasures Lara Croft, Indiana Jones, and Benjamin Franklin Gates were seeking?

Technology has had a major impact on treasure hunting over the years. A video shows us how the ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) can go to depths and into places which were previously unsearchable. GPS (Global Positioning System) now allows pinpoint accuracy in locating items and in turning the actual hunt into a sport or game of sorts with tools like Geocaching.

For the young treasure hunter, the exhibit contains hands-on activities such as cracking the combination on a safe, doing a coin rubbing, using a hand-held metal detector, and operating a joystick on a treasure hunt video game.

Do a little treasure hunting of your own by visiting this traveling exhibition at the Park City Museum through October 18.