Odessa Heritage Collection on the Web

The Odessa Public Library and Historisches Museum have recently added new material to its digital collection celebrating the history of Odessa and neighboring communities. The collection was made possible by a Washington Rural Heritage grant from the Washington State Library, funded by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) through the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

The Odessa Heritage Collection has added over 232 new items, including a digitized 40-minute narrated slide presentation created by Dr. John Gahringer, one of the founders of the Odessa Museum. Also, highlighted in the online collection are many original Joshua Elmer photos. Joshua Elmer was a professional photographer who documented many of Southwest Lincoln County’s working farms and farmers roughly a century ago. The collection includes many of Elmer’s original panoramic prints and also those that depict aspects of his family and home life. A recently acquired private collection also features local businesses and photos of the Pioneer Picnic activities at Crab Creek in the early 1900s.

As part of the grant, the Odessa High School 2011 junior class has compiled a 42-page booklet of the history of the Old Town Hall, with photos and interviews of local residents who remember the many dances, wedding receptions and other social events held in the building. Built around 1927 by Con E. Eckhardt, the Old Town Hall was sold to the Town of Odessa in 1931 for $10,000 to house the courtroom and jail, the Clerk’s office, the Mason’s meeting hall and eventually the town. ??

There are also 20 items of local interest placed on an interactive map on the website. The public is also encouraged to leave comments and provide photo ratings online.

The Rural Heritage collection is available at http://www.washingtonrural heritage.org/Odessa. Several other Washington communities’ digitized collections are also featured on this website, including Connell and Ritzville. The collection will also be available on the Odessa Public Library website in October, 2012.

The Odessa Public Library and Odessa Historisches Museum join more than 80 cultural institutions throughout the state that have digitized material with assistance from the Washington Rural Heritage initiative. Physical collections are housed locally by their owners, while digital collections are hosted by the State Library. So far, Washington Rural Heritage has published 25 collections including more than 13,000 unique items which document local history from every corner of the state.

In the coming year, we will be working on a recent acquisition of George Beck's collection of original Joshua Elmer photos to be added to the digital collection.