The old Sunderman Tack Shop is the Tourist Information Centre. In 1920 one of the 1st area residents, Kelly Sunderman, built a log tack shop which has since been restored and moved to the site as a reminder of those early days. Standing to the south of the Sunderman Tack Shop is the Tolief Omlid House, also a log structure, built in 1917. The main (and only, really) museum building, it has been filled with donated artefacts representative of early life in the Hythe area. Built on a farm 4 miles west of town, in 1993 it was donated to the museum and moved onto the site. The house was originally a home built for a mail order bride. Unfortunately the groom missed the bride and the house was never lived in.
Yet another museum which didn't open early enough in the day, we were unable to see the inside of either building and had to satisfy ourselves with what we were able to find on the museum grounds. Even at that it was worth a stop.
Outside, on the grounds are several larger artefacts, including this hand operated water pump. The pump has had a small well house built around it so we were unable to ascertain whether the pump is presently operational. Given that one of Hythe's two town mottos is "
The Town of Flowing Wells", it could well be functional. Lettering on the pump indicates it to be a
SMART pump, manufactured in Brockville, Ontario. This tells us that the pump was manufactured by the
James Smart Manufacturing Co. Smart was, at the time, one of the largest manufacturing companies in Canada, producing a wide range of cast iron products. Though difficult to date accurately, the pump was likely made shortly after the turn of the twentieth century.
An 1895 source gives a partial list of products made by this large and successful firm, "one of the most prominent concerns of the kind in the Dominion [of Canada]." Stoves, ranges, and furnaces; lawn mowers; steel butts; builders', carriage and cabinet makers' hardware; iron castings; pumps; hollow ware; house furnishings; "and hundreds of other classes of goods". In that year they employed 250 to 300 hands, and operated 7 days a week. The directors were John M. Gill, president and general manager; John H. A. Briggs, vice president and secretary treasurer; Allan S. Ault, Edward Davis, and W. H. Comstock.
From Vintage Machinery
Given that this is also the Hythe visitor Centre, there are also a couple of dedicated benches and a few picnic tables, with trees and several containers overflowing with flowers - altogether a good spot for a picnic under a shady tree.