Travel Directions:
Entering Riverton from the west, US-26 becomes Main
Street.
The post office is to the right, one block east of the
Broadway Avenue intersection, at 501 E Main Street.
Remarks:
Riverton’s post office is home to the
much-celebrated 1942 mural, “Lambing Time,” by
American artist George Vander Sluis (1915-1984). It shows
two herders, one with a white hat, the other a dark one,
tending sheep and lambs on a ranch. It is evocative of
the regionalist style which emerged during the Great
Depression and enjoyed a revival during World War II.
Vander Sluis’s work enjoyed a degree of prominence
and has been shown in major American museums, among them
the Metropolitan, the Whitney, and the Corcoran. Of
course, it is the subject matter of the Riverton Post
Office mural that draws us here.
After you are done admiring and
photographing the mural that somehow anticipated an
international cultural phenomenon more than 60 years
later, purchase a blank postcard or two from the friendly
clerk, who will gladly hand-cancel them “Riverton,
WY 82501” for you. You can even mail a card to Jake
Gyllenhaal from here, although your card may not get the
same results that Ennis’s did.
See:
http://www.askart.com/askart/v/george_j_vander_sluis/george_j_vander_sluis.aspx
http://www.wpamurals.com/riverton.htm
Quotation:
“ENNIS comes out of the little post office, casually
shuffling through a handful of mail.” [1]
[1] Brokeback Mountain
Screenplay, April 16, 2004 white pages with May 5, 2004
blue page revisions, Scene 148, page 101.
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