BOUNTIFUL — Tom Tolman is devoted to finding a home for this city's history.
When he ran for Bountiful City Council in 2001, he had one objective.
"My goal four years ago was to establish a museum and a place where we could establish the history of Bountiful," Tolman said.
As a lifelong resident of the city with a rich family connection to the area, Tolman said he has a responsibility to preserve the past. "My roots go back to day one here in Bountiful on both sides, so I feel a real need to record the history of our anscestors and what they have done to establish our city," he said.
In his first term as a City Council member, Tolman, who also serves on the Bountiful Historical Commission, and others have made great strides toward establishing an official city museum.
Nearly two years ago the Bountiful Historical Commission set up a small-scale museum in the basement of the Smith Hyatt Building at 845 S. Main, Suite B5. The building's owner, Tom Smith, offered some basement office space to the commission at half the rental price.
But the three-room miniature museum is filled to capacity.
"We're totally out of space now because we've had an overwhelming response of artifacts and histories," Tolman said.
The Historical Commission also successfully moved the Willey Cabin in the spring of 2005 from the land near the Bountiful Recreation Center to the land just south of the Bountiful/Davis Art Center at 745 S. Main.
"It makes it a great spot for the cabin — the corner of (the city's) campus," Tolman said. "This is the oldest building in Bountiful."
The cabin, which is near the Smith Hyatt building, also houses a few historical artifacts.
But Tolman's dream is to house the artifacts, records and personal histories of Bountiful in a 4,000-6,000 square-foot facility. He, along with the Historical Commission, has proposed building an addition onto the south side of the Bountiful/Davis Art Center that would serve as a museum.
"It just makes sense," Tolman said. "It completes the (city) campus as far as I am concerned."
Bountiful Mayor Joe Johnson is also in favor of joining the museum with the city's arts program. He said he can't speak about how large the museum would be and where it would be, but he thinks it is essential.
"Do I think it's important to preserve our history" The answer to that is certainly, 'yes,' " he said. "We have a rich history."
Bountiful Historical Commission Chairman Dean Collinwood said he isn't convinced that the addition to the Arts Center is the best place for the museum, but it is one of the better choices.
Collinwood said the commission originally thought it would be nice to house the artifacts in an old Bountiful mansion, like some of the neighboring cities have done.
"But there's also something to be said about having a state-of-the-art facility that is climate-controlled and properly fireproofed and also in a well-recognized location," Collinwood said. "And I think the building itself should be the protector of the materials that are stored there as opposed to that building maybe becoming a danger to the materials."
He said having the building on the same campus as City Hall will make it easy to direct people to the building. Everybody already identifies with that area, he added.
The museum, Tolman said, would ideally have an area for archives, a place for recording histories and climate-controlled rooms for some of the artifacts. Smith has designed a rough draft plan of what the building would look like. The plans also include eventually adding a theater onto the north side of the Art Center to serve the city's performing arts.
"They all complement each other," Tolman said of the buildings. "When people come to the arts or to a show, they can go to the museum."
Johnson said the rough-draft plan of the building is just an artist's conception. A layout of the building and a feasibility study for the land has not been completed.
"What we are looking at is an idea, and it's just an idea," Johnson said.
If money was raised, the city could do some of the studies and finalize some of the plans, Johnson said.
Tolman said a 6,000-square-foot museum would cost about $1.5 million. He said the commission feels it could raise about half of that money if not more. Then, hopefully the city will pay for the rest, Tolman said.
"I think they (city officials) all agree it needs to be done, but the funding is the thing," Tolman said.
Johnson said he and the City Council unofficially told Tolman in a recent meeting that the city would match whatever funds the Historical Commission raised up to $750,000. He also said the city just needs to keep working to get money through grants and donations.
"If you don't have money, it's just a dream," Johnson said. "I mean you can talk about a lot of things, but if you don't have money, you're just wasting oxygen and my time."
Collinwood said city officials have been wonderful to work with on the museum.
"They have allocated some seed money so we have the funds to start promoting and marketing and advertising to the public," Collinwood said. "The commission members are grateful to them."
The commission has formed a foundation, The Bountiful Historical Museum Foundation, to try to help raise money and to get grants for the new building. The foundation will eventually have its own board of directors to help with the museum. The commission is also working on making the foundation a nonprofit organization so that resident donations could be tax deductible.
The commission kicked off fund-raising efforts in November at the Stoker School's 100-year celebration. Collinwood said the goal is to have at least half of the $1.5 million raised in one year.
Collinwood said the museum would not only benefit Bountiful residents but other south Davis County residents as well. He said the the commission is in the fund-raising phase, next they will be in the building phase and lastly they will work on the collecting phase where area residents can donate their historical artifacts.
"What happens in museums is you are able to pull all the elements of people's lives into one place, and Bountiful doesn't have that at the moment," Collinwood said. "Our little museum is really inadequate to the task."
What's really important is allowing people from this generation to get a full picture of what their ancestors did, Collinwood added.
"Anytime you can leave tradition and leave what this city was made of by our pioneers, by our family members who lived here, and leave those for generations and generations, that is part of maturing," Johnson said. "I mean I want my children to know what I had and what my grandparents had and how I lived in Bountiful. History is so important for our kids, and if you don't start preserving it, it's gone."
Tolman said people his age are the ones who need to restore the history. Tolman was elected to a second Bountiful City Council term this past November. He said he will dedicate the rest of his life to establishing a full-size museum for Bountiful. But he hopes he doesn't have to wait that long.
"My generation has to do this," Tolman said. "If my generation doesn't do this, it won't be done. I have that link to the past still. I remember the stories of my great grandfather and my grandfather."
E-mail: nclemens@desnews.com