The carpenter shop and coffin maker building was built in the 1880s for the same purpose. Its original site was on the corner of 5th Street behind the old location of the Bank of Fairplay. It was relocated to South Park City sometime between 1957 and 1959. This building represents an original undertaking establishment of the Gold Rush Days. Carpenters' shops often doubled as an undertaking business, as most coffins were wood. The caskets were custom-made to fit the deceased. Mr. Humphery, a Buena Vista mortician, donated old cooling boards and an exquisite tin-bottomed casket lined with silk. The casket holds a container for ice to help preserve the body.
In a room to the right of the entrance are two cooling tables and ice containers. The deceased's body was placed on the table above the ice to help delay decomposition while the undertaker prepared the body for viewing or burial. Holes drilled in the ice container drained the melted ice away. A collection of the hardware used on caskets, along with adornments and mourning stationery, can be seen. A unique salesman's kit for selling tombstones rests on a table.
In the front room are the woodworking tools of the pioneer carpenter. Some of the tools were brought across the plains from Saint Louis, Missouri, by Olney B. Borden in 1865. He took up a homestead eleven miles southeast of Jefferson, Colorado, in Bordenville. Many of the tools are very rare, and a collection such as this would be difficult to find elsewhere. All sizes of wood planes, saws, cramps, and other woodworking items can be seen. Here is a rare foot-driven jigsaw and an old woodworking lathe made of wood. Many of these tools were used by Harvey Wright in 1874 to construct the Court House and the Sheldon Jackson Memorial Chapel in Fairplay.
