05/21/2026
No one knows for sure just when Ed conceived the idea of building a western town at Monroe School. Maybe it was when he and his 4th grade classes were building covered wagons that actually were used on trail rides. Maybe it was when he built a tent city on the playground to give his students the feel of life in a gold mining town.
At any rate, by 1997, with the assistance of two fellow teachers and a host of parents, he opened the James Monroe Children’s museum in a portable building.
From that beginning, the museum expanded every year. An entire gold mining town, complete with boot hill, was constructed on the site. Gwartney became the director, with teachers Sandra Carter and Susan Miller as his assistants.
They trained Monroe 6th graders to be docents for the museum and soon busloads of students and teachers from other schools were signing up for an interactive tour. The excitement was contagious.
A typical program began with the visiting youngsters packed in the general store to hear Gwartney tell what it was really like to travel the Oregon/California Trail.
Gwartney told how mothers gave birth to children; fathers buried them, and marauders dug them up. Dysentery swept through the wagon trains, and loads of precious provisions were dumped to keep the jaded mules and oxen alive.
Then with visions of the “Real West” firmly implanted in their minds, the visitors followed Gwartney outside to meet the Monroe student historians.
Folklorico dancers entertained the students in the old mission, and a docent shared some of the highlights of a neophyte’s life under the Jesuit missionaries.
The student visitors met Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Johnson, two women who traveled the trail together in 1846 and learned about the trials on their wagon train.
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For The Madera TribuneEd Gwartney.The late Ed Gwartney was a self-described product of the “Okie” migration who never earned a high school diploma but became a pathfinder of new trails in the teaching of history. He was the founder of the James Monroe Children’s Museum, and he has left it to o...
