Queer Public History in Small-Town Wisconsin: The Pendarvis Historic Site and Interpreting the Queer Past

This essay examines the interpretation of the lives and work of two queer men, Robert Neal and Edgar Hellum, at the Pendarvis Historic Site in the small town of Mineral Point, Wisconsin. Using this interpretation as a case study, the essay addresses how public historians might more fully incorporate the history of sexuality into historic site interpretative models. It suggests a number of strategies for helping visitors think critically about the history of sexuality and how our current understandings of sexual identity are not always useful or accurate ways of thinking about queer pasts.