Museum
Our Museum building is itself a showcase of our local history. The rear brick portion of the building was erected by the Village of Milaca in 1907 to house the community’s first electric power plant. When a power cooperative was formed and the city no longer produced electricity, the building became the city’s fire hall.
During the Depression, the city applied to the Works ProgressAdministration to have an improved fire hall and public meeting place built. In 1936 a cornerstone was laid, and a fieldstone City Hall was added to the renovatedbrick building. Architect Louis Pinault’s Craftsman design has Art Deco features, a Samuel Sabean lunette over the front door, and Federal Arts Project murals by André Boratko depicting Milaca’s logging and lumbering past in the auditorium.The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. National Register link, click here.
The Historic City Hall / Milaca Museum provides a narrative of the area’s development as a European-American settlement, housed in a structure created during a time of great change.
Collection
Our collection was initially an effort of the Milaca Home Civic Club, which was a very active women’s organization from 1920 through 1996. The Civic Club decided to set up a historical display in the City Hall, and began collecting objects and photographs in 1972, consulting with the Minnesota Historical Society about best practices. The Milaca Area Historical Society, which began meeting in 1984 as a genealogical society, was asked to take on the Civic Club’s history collection when the Civic Club saw the need to disband in the early 1990s. MAHS members spent over a year inventorying the collection of over 1000 items, and opened a display space in the brick part of the Historic City Hall building in the late 1990s. (Milaca’s Community Library occupied the auditorium space at this time). When a new library was erected a block away, the City of Milaca allowed MAHS to expand into the fieldstone building.
The collection has grown by leaps and bounds since that time, and with it our understanding of our history has also grown.
Exibits
Our exhibits help give context to our collected objects, photos and records. Beginning with the era pictured in the building’s murals, exhibits track the rise and fall of the lumber industry in central Mille Lacs County, the subsequent rise of agriculture and especially the dairy industry, and the commercial centers that served these industries and the people who engaged in them. Exhibits also highlight local people who served in the military, as well as the history of rural and town schools.
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