Important News: We're moving!
Buried (almost) under boxes
In our 50th year, the Society has been blessed to move our museum and archives to a new, spacious location at 300 Bomber Boulevard in Mountain Home.
The move is scheduled for Wednesday, May 15.
Because of the vast amount of material to be moved, and then reconfigured into the new BAXTER COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM, we won't be open at the new site with regular hours during the month of May, but please check back here and on our Facebook page, Baxter County Historical and Genealogical Society, Inc.
THE DEAR OLD HERITAGE CENTER BELOW WILL SOON BE REPLACED WITH NEW AND BETTER!
The Lobby Area Museum
The Lobby on the ground floor is the first area that the public sees when they enter the Heritage Center from Baker Street.
At present the lobby area includes a large gallery of significant historical photographs of our area, and a portion of our museum collection in exhibited on the floor, on every wall and in glass display cases.
One of the museum pieces is the original soda fountain which stood at the south side of the current lobby in the 1950’s, when the Heritage Center space was used by the original occupants, The Sweet Shop. The Heritage Center is a contributing structure in the Mountain Home Historic Business District on the National Register of Historic places.
Expansion of the museum is anticipated for the future by utilizing some of the space on the upper level of the Heritage Center, but that's a project which will require additional funding.
The Archives
Archival holdings consist of documents of many types, photographs, and historical artifacts. The Society has an agreement with County Government that our Archive Rooms
The Research Library
Patrons of the Heritage Center may not work or search in the Archives directly, but if they provide the goals of their research Heritage Center volunteers will bring appropriate resources from the Archives Rooms to the Research Library were thay can be used by the patron.
serve as an offiial repository of many inactive county public records. The Archives spaces are temperature and humidity controlled to help preserve the historic material.
Along with county records there are collections of articles, research notes, and correspondence of a number of local historians such as Mary Ann Messick, Bill Woodiel, and Vera Reeves.
The Archives also house family histories of families who are important to the development of the county and its various communities, histories collected and compiled by members of those families over many years.
We work regularly to store these materials and preserve them for research. Volunteers index the collections to help researchers find what they need.