Wungnema Open House on Sunday honors Native American heritage
The Foundation for Carson City Parks & Recreation is holding an Open House at the Wungnema House in Mills Park on Sunday, Feb. 19, from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. honoring Native American heritage.
The building is accessible by the Park entrance on Saliman Road, opposite the high school. Admission to the open house is free. This will be an opportunity to learn about this historic building, about Native American heritage, and about the Foundation.
This open house will have a special emphasis on Native American art. Other Open Houses will be scheduled later in the year.
A family of Hopi stone masons, the Wungnemas, built this 1000 square-foot house in 1948.
Burton Wungnema, Burton's father Earnest, and Burton's wife Pearl, built their home on what was then the eastern edge of Carson City. Burton and his wife met as students at the Stewart Indian School, married, and went on to raise their children in the home. Although Burton died shortly after his twenty-ninth birthday in May 1956, Pearl and her children continued to live in their home until the 1970s when they moved to a larger house. After nearly two decades of neglect, the house was acquired by Carson City, restored, and opened for a variety of public uses in December 2000. The Foundation maintains the historic Wungnema House under a lease from the city.
The Wungnema House is representative of the distinctive masonry work seen in churches and homes built by Burton and his father around Carson City and Lake Tahoe from 1925 to 1955. Examples of their work can be seen at various locations in Carson City, including at the Stewart Indian School. Burton used a distinctively colored rhyolite obtained from his father's quarries in the Brunswick Canyon area east of Carson City for the construction of his home. According to Wungnema family tradition, the chimney and fireplace utilized stones brought from Arizona. The fireplace's facade contains a cut-stone representation of clouds, lightning, and rain, forming the symbol of the Hopi Water clan, the clan to which Burton Wungnema belonged.
The Foundation, founded in 2015, is a non-profit member-driven 501(c)(3) organization created for charitable and educational purposes related to parks and recreation in Carson City. It is dedicated to bringing together members of the Carson City community to encourage and enable public support for the continuing enhancement of Carson City's parks and recreational facilities. The Foundation welcomes new members and is interested in individuals who can assist with fundraising, newsletter, publicity, special events, recruitment, and park clean up. Annual membership is $25.00. For further information, call David Bugli at 775-883-4154 or visit the website http://CarsonCityParks.org.
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