The Big Piney Library Spent Decades in Borrowed Rooms. Now It Lends Them Out.
October 15, 2026
October 15, 2026
The Big Piney Library turned 100 this fall. It began as books on shelves inside a church. Over the century it moved through a space near a grocery store, the back of a bank and an old post office lot before settling on Fish Street. Its October calendar shows that history running in reverse. A library that used to borrow space from the rest of town now rents out its own room, sends staff to the senior center and holds events at other venues around the area.
The October 3 Centennial Fall Festival is over. The Wyoming State Library's September 15 feature promised more than 50 vendors, food trucks, bounce houses, carnival games, face painting, a photo booth, live music, a s'mores station and a trail mix bar. Library Manager Tawnya Miller told the Pinedale Roundup, "We've made our Fall Festival celebration bigger." The rest of the fall is the better place to see what the library actually does after a century.
The library's own history page dates the start to the fall of 1926. A small group of residents decided Big Piney needed a library, and they worked with Reverend Archibald Best to keep and lend the books out of the Community Congregational Church. Local people built the fixtures. Oscar Piper made glass doors to protect the books, and the school's shop teacher, Mr. Anderson, built the shelves with his students.
The library opened with 400 books, and nine were checked out on the first day. Miss Jesse Bird was hired as the first librarian, but her pay proved too expensive, and volunteers took over. So from its first year the library ran on a host institution's building, other people's carpentry and unpaid staff.
The library's history page records a revival in 1957. A group from Pinedale set up a bookkeeping system, the records were updated and new books came in. A librarian was hired again, first June Wassenberg and then Allen Harper. After that, the moves came quickly.
| Year | Where the library lived | What it had |
|---|---|---|
| 1926 | Community Congregational Church | 400 books, volunteer staff |
| 1958 | Small building near Burney and Company's Grocery Store | About 2,800 books, 305 registered borrowers |
| 1963 | Back of the former bank building, then and now Big Piney Town Hall | Collection and patrons doubled within four years |
| 1974 | Its own building across the street, on the old Post Office site | First purpose-built home |
| 1991 | Addition to that building | Computers, bar codes, online catalog |
| Today | 106 S. Fish St. | Renovated interior unveiled December 2022 |
The 1958 move came with gas heating and lighting. The same year, the County Commissioners created the Sublette County Library Board and appointed Reta Carr as librarian. An interlibrary loan service started then too. The WyoHistory.org entry on Pinedale describes community leaders in Pinedale and Big Piney forming a county library system to use newly available state assistance. That makes 1958 the year the Big Piney collection became part of something larger than one town.
The Town Hall years built the habits the library still keeps. Within four years of the 1963 move, the collection and the number of patrons had doubled, a summer reading program and story hour had started, and open hours had grown. An assistant named Beth Bray was hired in that space, and starting in 1969 she served as librarian for 23 years.
The 1974 building was built for the library. Kellog and Kellog Architects designed it, and Superior Lumber Company built it. The same firm had built the Sublette County Library in Pinedale in 1969. After the 1991 addition, Carrie Anderson was appointed librarian. She brought in computers, bar codes and new library cards, and she moved the collection onto an online catalog. Debi Morley, the first to hold the title of Big Piney Library manager, oversaw the planning and construction of the current library on Fish Street.
When the Fish Street interior went through a ten-month renovation in 2021, the library moved most of its materials, services and programs into the Big Piney Recreation Center. The new space opened to the public in December 2022. Tawnya Miller has been manager since August 2019, which means the renovation and the centennial both happened on her watch.
The renovated building has a room the old church shelves never could have offered. According to the library's rental page, the Big Piney Community Room measures 23 by 36 feet and holds up to 49 people. It has tables and chairs, a full kitchen, free Wi-Fi, a projector, a screen and audio equipment, and the public can rent it. For decades the library was the guest in other institutions' buildings. Now other groups book space in its building.
The Big Piney events page shows a month built around that room, plus regular trips out of the building.
In the Community Room and Board Room at 106 S. Fish St.:
Out of the building:
Put the senior center visit next to the 1926 church collection and the arrangement has turned around. The library once depended on a congregation for a roof. Now it carries its shelves to another community building on select Wednesdays each month.
The Pinedale Online calendar, updated October 6, lists a Big Piney Library Pop Up Market on Saturday, October 17, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with shopping and crafting. It's a smaller follow-up to the vendor-heavy festival two weeks earlier.
The same calendar lists Marbleton's Jack-O-Lantern Jamboree on Thursday, October 29, from 6 to 8 p.m. outside Marbleton Town Hall. It includes a pumpkin walk, chili and pumpkin pie contests, a haunted hallway and cake walk, and hot chocolate and cider, and the listing says all events are free. That's the same day as the library board's noon meeting in Big Piney.
Further out, the Sublette Community Choir has a concert listed for Saturday, December 12, at 2 p.m. at the Southwest Sublette County Pioneers Senior Center in Marbleton. Through the fall, that senior center also hosts Big Piney and Marbleton flu-vaccine clinics every Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., a schedule that began September 29.
The founders never had a building of their own. They had a church willing to hold the books, a neighbor who could make glass doors and a shop class that could build shelves. The State Library's centennial feature describes the library today as "a place created for and supported by its community." The October calendar shows what that looks like in practice: a 49-person room that other groups can rent, a book club reading Slewfoot, a crochet club making projects for the community, and staff carrying audiobooks and DVDs to the senior center.
The first 400 books sat on shelves made by students in a school shop class. The building at 106 S. Fish St. now hosts the clubs, classes and meetings that groups once had to find space for elsewhere.
At RE/MAX Elite, Julie Kannier, Amanda Martinez and Emily Nardacci keep track of Sublette County's calendar, from Fish Street to Marbleton Town Hall, because it shapes daily life here. If you have a question about Big Piney, or want to talk through where your plans fit in this community, get in touch.
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