The Gift Shop: I Bet You Can't Spot Smokey Bear.

The Grey Towers Gift Shop is a cramped little tower room on the Northwest side of the house. It is run by a very bright and energetic volunteer named Ruth most of the time, but when Ruth is not around, us interns have to take our turns sitting in the gift shop. The shop houses numerous pieces of Grey Towers memorabelia like shirts, post cards, hats, mugs, etc. It also carries a lot of kids' toys, especially ones dealing with conservation and wildlife, like these cute little stuffed birds.

We do sell some books in the gift shop, but overall I was disappointed in the amount and depth of most of them. At Daniel Boone there was a vast assortment of books dealing with numerous topics in eighteenth century history. Many of them were scholarly in nature and written by well respected historians. I find that the books in the gift shop at Grey towers are either geared toward conservation and the green movement (not that there is anything wrong with that) or they are biographies (some of which are very good) of famous foresters and conservationists. Overall the book selection in the gift shop could be much more historical. There is nothing about teh time period that Gifford Pinchot lived, neither about the Victorian era or the Progressive era. There is very little about Teddy Roosevelt and his work in Conservation. There is nothing on the suffrage movement, or any of the other causes that Gifford and his wife were champions of.

However, there is Smokey Bear. I challenged myself to see how many different Smokey items I could take a picture of today. Here is what I found.








I guess you've got to give the people what they want, right?