Lorraine and Joe McNeal have been married nearly 60 years. In that time, the couple has seen plenty of change in the Colorado River Valley — but in New Castle, they’ve also worked to keep the past alive.

Both volunteer at the New Castle Museum, where they help share the story of their hometown. The shelves are lined with blacksmithing tools, sewing machines, radios, stoves and other relics of everyday life. Many pieces come with personal memories.

“I graduated from Garfield County High School in Glenwood Springs,” Lorraine said. “Anyone in Garfield County could go to school there, and then they changed things over in 1960.”

Lorraine will turn 86 on Burning Mountain Day, Sept. 13. She grew up in a coal miner’s family — her father worked in the South Canyon mine. Later, she left briefly to work for Texaco Corporation in Denver. That’s when fate intervened.

“I was visiting back here and my friend said, hey, there’s this guy you should meet,” she recalled. “And that’s how I met Joe.”

Joe, also 86, was born in New Castle in 1939. He spent a stint in the military but soon returned for good. His family roots run deep in the area.

“One of my great-great-grandfathers was born in 1745 in Virginia, before there was West Virginia,” he said. “My grandparents didn’t get here until 1913 from Oklahoma.”

The museum itself has a layered history. The building once served as New Castle’s town hall, where residents came to pay their bills. The town converted it into a museum in 1984 after a petition from a local librarian.

“When we first got married, it was still the town hall,” Lorraine said. “We used to come in and pay our bills here.”

Among the donations are pieces from Joe’s grandfather, Joe Parrish — the last blacksmith in town.

“I think he sold his team of horses and cart for the blacksmithing equipment,” Joe said. “It was around 300 dollars and in those days, that was a lot of money.”

Other artifacts tell the story of daily life: Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup bottles, baby soap tins, hand-stitched clothing, wooden spools of thread and irons so heavy they had to be heated on coal stoves.

“You’d have to put it on the stove to warm it up and they were so heavy,” Lorraine said. “So heavy, and you’d have to be quick.”

The museum also holds reminders of the industry that built New Castle. Joe has studied coal mining and railroads extensively, pointing out safety lamps once used to measure methane in mines and photos of miners after explosions. He explains how trains backed up to the mine mouth to haul coal all the way to Denver.

New Castle’s very name is tied to that history. Once called Grand Butte, then Chapman, the town adopted “New Castle” like many other American mining towns. The Vulcan Mine — closed since 1918 but still burning underground — gave rise to names like Burning Mountain Park.

“The economy went down after it was closed,” Joe said. “I have tapes from people from 40 years ago who were alive when it happened.”

Beyond keeping the collection organized, the McNeals also help visitors trace family connections. They once located the grave of a Civil War doctor after identifying him in an old photo of the town’s baseball team.

“We found the records and went looking for the grave,” Joe said. “We’ve been able to put things together for people who come looking.”

Inside the museum, the displays range from pelts and dolls to radios that once pulled in broadcasts from London. Keys with long-forgotten purposes are given out as souvenirs.

“We try to keep it clean, and the jail is being cleaned out right now,” Lorraine said. “We also have a lot of old keys that we don’t know what they go to. You can have your very own key.”

For Joe, context is everything.

“If you don’t have context, a lot of it doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “I try to greet everybody when they come in.”

The New Castle Museum is at 116 N. Fourth St. Tours are available through the New Castle Historical Society at 970-984-2142 or newcastlehistoricalsociety@gmail.com. More information is at newcastlecolorado.org/bc-historic/page/new-castle-museum.