Community Fine Arts Center

The Community Fine Arts Center in Rock Springs is a unique collaboration of the City of Rock Springs, Sweetwater County and the local School District # 1. Due to this cooperation, residents and visitors alike can enjoy this "cultural oasis" in southwest Wyoming's high desert country. The CFAC offers a permanent collection and changing displays of fine art as well as a year round schedule of performing arts programs.

We are a non-profit multi-arts center begun in 1965 by a local science teacher with a great love for art and a vision for his school and community. Its beginning started much earlier -- 1939 -- when the first painting was purchased to hang in the local high school. In the summer months, Mr. Elmer Halseth would travel America to buy paintings, drawings and prints for the students of Rock Springs. He used nickels and dimes gathered from school carnivals, bake sales and donation jars during the school year. The first painting purchased,

Shack Alley, by Henrietta Wood, became the nucleus for the permanent collection that now makes its home in the Community Fine Arts Center. Mr. Halseth became the first director of the Center as well as a State Representative and was a supporter of the arts until his death in 1991.