Marshall County Museum Historic Crossroads Center opens updated exhibit
PLYMOUTH — The Marshall County Historical Society Museum opened their updated Historic Crossroads Center exhibit in July of this year. This exhibit was made to explain the unique position our county holds in early road building across the U.S.
Marshall County is the only place that had the five early transcontinental highways intersect.
The museum shared that this was an important story that connects the past to the present while touching many areas of the county’s life.
This exhibit was updated to better represent different population groups in the area. The original exhibit came to the museum in 2011. The exhibit was also updated to create more space and to provide a story that is told more cohesively with greater detail.
This project was funded through a Lilly Grant and administered through the Indiana Historical Society.
The updated Historic Crossroads Center was able to reach further back in time to include the Potawatomi origin story. The information is now organized chronologically.
There are now seven story stations that shows the county grow by looking at Potawatomi origins, deforestation, homesteading, migration, agriculture to agribusiness, wheels of industry, and tourism.
An item that was kept for the updated exhibit was a module that has an interactive map of the U.S. This map shows the five original coast-to-coast highways.
The museum worked with exhibit designer Nora Pinell-hernandez to design a 3/4 size wigwam and other sections of the exhibit.
The museum was in contact with Blake Norton of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center while designing the exhibit. They worked together to accurately tell the Potawatomi story.
Local people who had been migrant workers were also contacted to help tell the migrant story with sensitivity and relevance.
Sandy Garrison, Executive Director of the Marshall County Museum, and Sue Irwin, Assistant Director of the Marshall County Museum, talked about what the project means to them.
“Marshall County is unique in that it’s the only place in the entire country that five of the historic highways actually cross. It’s such a foundational piece of our history,” Garrison said.
“It’s inclusivity for one, everybody can find themselves in there, their history in some way or another, even people who don’t originate from Marshall County,” Irwin said.
The museum will submit applications for this project for three awards. One state award, a regional award and a national award.
The state award is the Indiana History Outstanding Event or Project Award. This award goes to an organization for an exceptional educational event or history project implemented during the past year. Going along with it is the Outstanding Collaborative Project Award. This recognizes an exceptional project by a historical/ heritage organization and one or more partners implemented during the past year.
The regional award is the Best Practices award. This award recognizes museums and cultural organizations whose innovative projects or community partnerships and collaborations have pushed beyond the status quo and led to the advancement of best museum practices or the establishment of new practices at their institutions in order to better fulfill their missions.
The national award is the Award of Excellence. This award is to recognize excellence for projects and individual lifetime achievement.
The museum decided to submit their projects after Tamara Hemmerlein, the Director of Local History Services at the Indiana Historical Society suggested this.
“She was very complimentary, it was very encouraging to us that she really liked it,” Irwin said.
Hemmerlein shared why she thought the museum should submit applications. She said that she thought they were doing a great job with exhibits and community engagement. She was impressed with their level of inclusivity and the number of people that they reached out to for the exhibit.
“The effort goes beyond Marshall County. They put in an effort to actively engage with the community and show stories that haven’t been told,” Hemmerlein said.
The opportunity to submit applications for these awards is exciting to the museum. It is exciting because if they won the award a lot of positive attention would come to the museum. This would also bring in visitors.
“What we really want is for folks to come in and see the project,” Garrison said.
Garrison and Irwin said that the project took almost two years to all come together.
“It’s just humbling and affirming. Plus its just awesome if it fulfills our mission. The reason why we come to work everyday. The importance of their history, their story,” Garrison said.