Powell Ward 1954

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Powell Ward 1950?

Where we Attended LDS Church in Powell WY

The Penrose Church no longer was used for LDS church meetings after sometime in the 1930s.  I remember going to Sunday School and sitting on little chairs out in the front yard during the summer months during our class time.  Grandpa Wasden was branch president, and bishop, of the Penrose Branch and Ward for, I think, 13 years or so.  For awhile, we attended Church sporadically in Byron, about five miles away.  Then we began attending church in Powell, 12 miles the other way. I don't remember if this has been posted.  It is a scan of a page from the Powell LDS Ward history booklet.  The top photo is a home where LDS members first met in Powell.  The next move was to the Boy Scout Cabin, the tiny log building on the left.  The Boy Scout cabin remained in this location until a couple of years ago or so (this year is 2010) when it was moved and a new Chamber of Commerce building built on this location.  The bottom photo of the IOOF hall shows the "church" that I most remember, because the LDS Powell congregation met here until the summer after I graduated from high school.  In 1949, the congregation was able to purchase two or more surplus barracks from the Heart Mountain "Relocation" Center where Japanese were incarcerated during WWII and used the materials to build the first chapel that the Powell LDS people could call home, complete with a classroom wing.  This building still stands today and is in continual use as an Elk's lodge building and for other community events.  Last summer (2009), our Powell High School Class  of 1949 held its 60th reunion banquet in this hall.  It was only slightly amusing to note that the bar for the lodge is located where the LDS Bishop's office was originally located.  I have attended and visited many modern and extravagant LDS, by comparison, to the IOOF Hall, LDS church buildings as we moved around the country.  But my memories of Church and what it has always meant to me throughout my life took root and were nourished by a group of humble farmers here in this building, in what we called the "Eye-Oof" hall.  I never really needed much else.