Unlock
Hemingway House
The more people love the Wood
River Valley, the more they want to put it under lock and key.
The newest example: Neighbors of
the home that once belonged to world-renowned author Ernest Hemingway
emphatically opposed a Ketchum permit that would allow use of the home
and its river-view site by the public.
The Hemingway House Foundation,
which oversees the home, wants to make it available six days a week for
limited tours by the public, educational outings for school children and
writing workshops. Tours would be limited to 15 people, delivered to the
site by van, up to three times per day, six days a week.
City staff estimated that trips to
the site probably would not exceed 13 per day.
Neighbors claim that the private
status of the road that accesses the site blocks such use. That’s one
for the lawyers.
Assuming the Hemingway House has
the same right to use the road as its neighbors, the city should support
efforts to open the home to kids, scholars and the rest of the public
who are beneficiaries of Ernest Hemingway’s great literary legacy.
Thirteen trips a day is nothing in
a valley where private mega-homes generate more traffic from the service
workers who attend them each day. Quiet tours and study of the home
where the author died should disturb no one.
Ketchum should unlock Hemingway
House.