The Winslow Chamber of Commerce is adding a transportation museum to help better educate the public about Winslow’s transportation history. The museum will be located in an old train car that has been parked next to the Hubble Building since its opening as the Chamber of Commerce in 2009.
The Chamber of Commerce received a $10,000 grant from the Route 66 Historical Society, which was matched by a $5,000 contribution from the city and the chamber of commerce. Construction will begin to add a walkway out from the door in the chamber to attach the train car like a building addition to the rest of the building, the chamber recently awarded the bid of construction to local contractor DIY Ranch.
Bob Hall, CEO of the chamber of commerce, hopes to open the museum by summer. He sees the museum as a place where students can visit and learn about Winslow’s rich history, including its role as a transportation hub. “A lot of kids who grew up here don’t know the history of this town,” says Hall. “They don’t know that the largest ice factory was here, or that Charles Lindberg designed our airport, or even that the Hubble Building was once the headquarters for the largest trading post company in the US at the time.” Hall hopes to remedy some of these issues with this museum and give people more of a reason to be proud of where they came from.
Hall already has many of the items that will be displayed in the museum, including authentic conductor uniforms, old railroad switches, and artwork depicting Winslow during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The museum will be a place where students and residents can come and be immersed in the area’s history.
The transportation museum has been a dream of Hall’s for over a decade, and he is eager to finally see it come to fruition.
Currently, the chamber already acts much like a museum for the trading post that the building used to house and is filled to the brim with items associated with the trading that would happen there. However, with this addition visitors and residents alike will be able to visit and get a much bigger picture of how important the town was for the area back in the day and help preserve that rich history.
