Big changes are underway at the historical Navajo County Courthouse in downtown Holbrook, including new displays, easier access to research materials and a website.
Volunteers have been spending hundreds of hours sorting through the Navajo County Historical Society’s storage areas, finding new items to display and cataloging them on an improved system that will make it simple for anyone doing research to find all the information available about a particular item or topic.
New displays include a military room in the upstairs of the courthouse that showcases the contributions of local residents as far back as World War I. It also includes a feature on accomplishments by the local Civilian Conservation Corps members, who helped construct the Painted Desert Inn and the original office building at the fairgrounds. A reimagining of the theater room is transforming it into an archive of the businesses and people who served Route 66 during its busiest days. The display is still under construction, but so far includes homages to the bus station started by Chester Campbell and to popular music during the Mother Road’s heyday.
The long-standing Schuster’s store and drugstore displays have been revamped. New lighting has been added, and Director JoLynn Fox explained that all of the items were removed, cleaned and checked against historical society records. Additional information gleaned about them is being added on presentation signs. In addition, some items were swapped out for treasures found while cleaning out the storage areas.
A new section featuring Native American arts and crafts such as kachina dolls and pottery has also been installed and is visible inside the vault.
Several new displays are also being put together by volunteers, including one on the popularity of square dancing in the area in the 1940s and ‘50s, with a focus on the local group, the Hub City Ramblers. Other displays are planned to honor the history of ranching families in the area, as well as Campfire Girls and Boy Scouts, and a display featuring the contents of past time capsules. Fox explained that the society was able to obtain some additional display cases when Alco went out of business and they will soon be filled with items that were previously tucked away in storage.
“All of this has been donated by people who lived or worked here. It tells their story,” she said.
While the new displays are the most obvious changes, even bigger ones have been taking place behind the scenes. Fox explained that the historical society has always relied on volunteers to complete the necessary work of cataloging, displaying and organizing items. While the volunteers worked hard, methods used to catalog items and cross-reference them were inconsistent. Using a new software program, the volunteers have now been going through every item and inputting all available information about each item into the system. Although time-consuming and tedious, it will not only consolidate the historical society’s records and create an easily reproducible catalog, it will also make searching the archives much easier.
Fox noted that once all of the items are in the new system, research will be simple. For example, a search for Sheriff Frank Wattron will bring up every photograph, book, article, document and item in the historical society’s possession that is related to Wattron. Although items were cross-referenced in the old system, finding everything related to a specific person, date or item required a time-consuming manual search.
Volunteers have also spent considerable time updating and cross-referencing the society’s obituary records. Fox explained that there were some gaps in the records due to lack of manpower, and that previously the logs were only searchable by year, meaning that anyone looking for a particular obituary needed to have some idea of the year of death in order to locate a record. With the creation of new cross-referenced logs, obituaries can now be located both by name and date.
“None of this could have been done without all of the volunteers,” Fox said. “Without the past volunteers none of this would be here. They’re the ones who started it. We’re just organizing and perpetuating it.”
Fox noted that the historical society has big plans for the upcoming year, but relies on donations of time, money and items of historical value in order to continue preserving and documenting the area’s history. The society is especially looking for Route 66 memorabilia that is at least 40 to 50 years old and directly related to local businesses, as well as historic Campfire Girls and Boy Scout items. Photographs of a historical nature are also always welcome. Monetary donations help cover the costs of preserving items and improving displays, as well as the office expenses incurred by the society.
“This is the community’s museum,” Fox said. “It tells the story of all the people who lived and worked here.”
The addition of small hanging displays in the courtroom at the historical Navajo County Courthouse not only decorates the empty space, but tells the story of some of the area’s most well-known figures and events, such as Sheriff Frank Wattron and the hanging of George Smiley, and the shoot-out between Commodore Perry Owens and the Blevins Brothers.
As part of the new display in the military room at the historic courthouse, replicas of the painted glass panels created by the Civilian Conservation Corps that served as skylights help relay the story of the rebuilding and expansion of the Painted Desert Inn by the corps in the late 1930s.
