Contributed by Richard Estelle
Every museum should have a wooden leg in its collection of artifacts. The Palmer Museum of History & Art has a “leg up” on those that don’t, and the one we have really is made of wood.
The leg came to the museum many years ago with no information as to when it was made or to whom it belonged. We’re pretty certain it wasn’t used by some unipedal prospector to hike the Valley trails or climb the surrounding mountains, however. In fact, it appears to be a homemade cobbler's “boot last”. That’s the shoe-like form over which a shoemaker places a boot in order to more easily make footwear repairs.
One might imagine an early homesteader in the Valley needing to replace the worn-out sole or re-nail a loose heel on his leather boots from time to time, and being frustrated by the difficulty of holding his boot in place while driving the nails. So he found a piece of a birch tree with just the right bend to it and hacked it into shape with his kindling ax. Then he formed a piece of scrap iron to the size of his own foot and bolted it to the bottom of the wooden foot. At last he had a “last”. The “leg” would be turned upside down, the boot fitted over the iron-shod foot, and the repairs easily made.
