Ronald V. Jensen Living Historical Farm

The Ronald V. Jensen Living Historical Farm, a museum program of Utah State University, was located on the former Franklin H. Wyatt family farm near Wellsville, Utah. Director Jay A. Anderson instituted a master's degree program in Outdoor Museum Administration at the Farm, and his students operated the museum and amassed this research collection on which the museum's interpretation was based. During Anderson's tenure (1985-1993), the Farm portrayed a 1917 southern Cache Valley family farm. In the late 1990's, the Jensen Historical Farm was subsumed by the American West Heritage Center.

From the description of The Jensen Historical Farm research collection, 1853-1993. (Utah State University). WorldCat record id: 76944510

The Ronald V. Jensen Living Historical Farm, a program of Utah State University, was started in 1970 with a donation from USU agriculture alumnus, R. V. Jensen, who specified that his gift be used to establish a working farm museum that involved students in its operation. The museum was located on 120 acres near Wellsville in southern Cache Valley, Utah, at the former Franklin H. Wyatt farm. Buildings representative of Cache Valley's history were relocated to the site to recreate a historic family farm. (The original Frank Wyatt farmhouse still exists on the property but had been modernized and was not suitable for inclusion.) The collections of the Man and His Bread Museum, an indoor museum of agriculture-related artifacts founded on the USU campus in the late 1950's, were also relocated to the Jensen Historical Farm site.

In 1985 folklorist and outdoor museum specialist Jay Allan Anderson was hired to direct the Jensen Historical Farm museum and establish a master's degree program in Outdoor Museum Administration. Anderson changed the Farm's time period from a generic "pioneer farm" to the year 1917, a prosperous year for Cache Valley farmers and a date which the museum's artifact collections could support. During Anderson's tenure at the Farm (1985-1993), graduate students operated all aspects of the museum, from restoration of artifacts to animal husbandry to research to costumed interpretation. Anderson's students compiled a collection of primary and secondary sources on which to base accurate historical interpretation of a 1917 southern Cache Valley family farm. When Anderson left the Farm in 1993 the focus of the program began to shift so he transferred the research collection to USU Special Collections. The Jensen Historical Farm was eventually subsumed by the newly-formed American West Heritage Center when the Festival of the American West.

From the guide to the The Jensen Historical Farm Research Collection, 1961-1993, (Utah State University. Special Collections and Archives)