Museum Prepares For Summer Season

By Jessica Malone

The spring meeting of the Powder River Historical Society is scheduled for 2pm on Saturday, May 14th. If you are interested in volunteering this season, please feel welcome to attend.

As we prepare for the 2022 summer season at the Powder River Historical Museum, it seemed a good time to look back on 2021…

Following our COVID closure in 2020, it was a joyful event to reopen the museum to visitors in 2021. Although it was not our busiest season, we welcomed many visitors and travelers through our doors as our volunteers worked tirelessly to clean, organize and update our displays from the closure. Thank you to all our volunteers for your efforts to keep this organization running and special thanks to our new youthful volunteers for your time and enthusiasm, most notably Delaney Ruland, Rachel Rosencranz and Deanna Twedt!

Our museum was selected in 2021 as part of a rural museum charity initiative for a $1,000 donation from Montana Land Title Association Foundation. We were also the recipient of funds raised by two local Steps for Charity Challenge teams this spring! We greatly appreciate everyone who donates time, money or historical items to our museum.

We were also pleased to continue our Powder River Examiner Newspaper Digitization project with a grant from the Powder River Community Endowment Fund administered by the SCDC and a generous donation from Broadus Boot & Tack. We were able to complete the second phase of our efforts in 2021 bringing the digital record up through 1950. You can browse the digital newspapers via the links on our website http://www.powderriverhistory.com under the Collections tab.

At our fall board meeting we confirmed several officers and directors, including Jessica Malone as President and Dee Talcott as Treasurer, and voted in new officers Sandy Smith as Vice President and Kathy Heidel as Secretary. We also welcomed two new directors, Kate Ruland and Cody Morris, to our board.

Finally, in September, the museum hosted a Sunday Afternoon Tea and Women’s Fashion Show in celebration of the centennial of women’s suffrage in 2020. Attendees enjoyed tea and treats and a modern and historic fashion show presented by Silver Sage, Western Chick and Copper Moon Bead Artistry.

We hope to bring you more fun events at the museum this season, so stay tuned and we hope to see you this summer!