The Carbon Farmers’ Exchange is a 99 year old heritage building housing a museum and small art gallery. The Exchange was at one time a hub for the small community, showing Saturday night movies and holding dinners and dances. The building was constructed in 1915 - a year after almost all of the town of Carbon was destroyed by fire.

A short, scenic drive up  Highway 575 out of the Drumheller valley sits a treasure tucked down within another valley.
    The beautifully preserved Farmers’ Exchange in Carbon is a ninety-nine year old heritage building housing a museum and small art gallery, and includes a lovely garden at the back of the museum.

    The Farmers’ Exchange was built in 1915 when coal mining in the area was booming.
    Originally called the Nash and Burnett store, it was built after Carbon’s fire of 1914, when almost all of the town was destroyed by the fire.
    As Mabel White, 93, recalled to the museum’s Marvel Nash, the fire started in the old ice house at the back of her mother’s ice cream shop.
    The town’s community hall was also lost in the fire, and Nash and Burnett became the town hub for banquets, dinners, dances, and movies.
    The main floor of the building had the general store known as the Farmers’ Exchange.
    In 1917 Jack and Len Poxon purchased the store, and the store was tied in closely with community life in Carbon in the 1930s and 1940s.
    Len later turned the Exchange into a furniture store, which stayed as a family business until 1974 - almost 60 years.
    Pieces of everyday life from bygone eras can be found at the exchange, including memorabilia from the area’s coal mining and ranching history.
    The building also houses The Prickly Pear Art Gallery, which offers a small selection of paintings, including watercolors, photographs, prints and pottery for sale.    
    The Farmers’ Exchange museum is open mid-May to mid-September, Tuesday through Saturday.

Carol Todor, second from the left, training her Functional Fitness Fascia Class to move naturally.

A local woman has exchanged the gym for a playground in a new fitness craze she has dubbed Functional Fitness Fascia.
    Carol Todor has pursued athletics all her life. Training fitness leaders, yoga and dance students, Todor realized something had always been missing from her fitness classes. When Todor happened upon the idea of fascia, the network connections between and around our body systems and muscles, she began to learn how the human body works as a continuous unit.
    “Because I had a back injury, I started exploring for different information about fascia, and I came across this guy who was doing a “Fascial Active Stretching Technique,” so I started to incorporate little bits into my yoga and my dance, and for myself. I thought, this is starting to feel a little better, and it feels pretty natural,” Todor explains.
    After learning about fascia, Todor was inspired to reach further in an effort to properly educate herself and integrate the ideas into her daily fitness routine. Todor’s efforts were rewarded when she found “MovNat,” a program that revolves around the natural movement skills every human has: walking, running, jumping, balancing, crawling, climbing and swimming. In addition, the  training also focuses on manipulative abilities like lifting, carrying,  throwing, and catching.
    “I saw what was involved in moving naturally. I was really inspired because I wasn’t too crazy about just walking, and this gave me activities to do while I was walking, so now it’s like walking has opportunities to find ways to move naturally.” Todor says, “Basically, it’s based on all the moves we learn when we are very young but we forget to use them. So if we find a log in the bushes, we squat down to pick it up, balance it, and push it up over our head.”
     Todor has found herself  looking forward to her future exercises, classes and health. The Functional Fitness Fascia classes Todor had introduced in Drumheller ran for six weeks, and she is contemplating another set of sessions in Mid-August.