Pioneers’ Museum taps Brinkerhoff as first archivist
IMPERIAL – In addition to its recent new director appointment, the board of directors of Pioneers’ Museum is pleased to announce its hiring of Tyler Brinkerhoff to serve as the museum’s first archivist.
According to a Pioneers’ Museum press release, Brinkerhoff ’s love of museums and American history was ingrained in him at an early age, working with his grandfather to create a pioneer museum in his hometown of Mapleton, Utah. Throughout his undergraduate and graduate studies, he served in various museum archival and curatorial roles, including Rocktown History in Dayton, Virginia and Museums at Union Station in Ogden, Utah. Additionally, he also taught World and United States history during his graduate program at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
“With Tyler, you immediately see his passion is history and those objects that tell the story of our past,” Karen Ayala, president of the Imperial Valley Historical Society, said. “We recognize that in order to digitize and share our collections, which trace the development of the Imperial County from barren desert to a thriving community, we were going to need someone with both his passion and expertise in archival and digitization processes.”
“Tyler’s expertise and enthusiasm for archives, from preservation to research, will help Pioneers’ Museum continue to share Imperial County’s stories for future generations,” said Museum Director Caitlin Chávez.
Moving to the Imperial Valley in early 2023 from the East Coast, “Brinkerhoff is excited to serve his new community in the preservation, documentation, conservation and exhibition of objects and archives from more than a century of Imperial Valley history,” the release reads.
The new archivist immediately felt a connection with the stories of Valley pioneers bringing water to the desert, he said.
“The engineering feat it took to create the Imperial Irrigation District for the use of the farmers in the Imperial Valley reminded me of my hometown experiences, which drew me to this job and this area,” Brinkerhoff said. “I have pioneer ancestors who moved west to Utah in the 1800s and I grew up on a family farm, which they homesteaded in the 1880s. I grew up using the same ditches and canals that they built more than 120 years ago for irrigating my family’s crops today.”
According to the release, Brinkerhoff said he is grateful for the decades-long efforts by dedicated Pioneers’ Museum volunteers who have maintained the extensive task of scanning and cataloguing of tens of thousands of objects, photos and documents in the collections.
“Making our archives available online to serve the greater public beyond our physical location in Imperial County is one of our long-term goals,” he said.