SANDPOINT — Music roared from a JBL speaker in the middle of the Bonner County Historical Society and Museum as staff and volunteers assembled its next exhibit “For the Record” on Monday. 

Focusing on the museum’s archival collection, the new exhibit will take the place of “Come What May, We Will Play” as the first exhibit attendees will see upon entering the building. Olivia Fee, curator for the museum, said the idea for the exhibit was pitched to her as a way of showing off what people usually come to the museum for. 

“I chewed on that for a while, and I thought that, well, ‘What does everybody kind of know this place for? What do they come here for?’” Fee said. “Let's feature those, because they come and do the research on them, but they actually don't know the story behind the resources they're searching and looking at.” 

Fee began by digging through the archives and searching for personal stories of the journalists, photographers and surveyors who laid the foundation of Bonner County History. The exhibit will walk visitors through the 1890s all the way until the 1940s, showing off newspapers and the technology people used at the time. 

Hannah Combs, executive director of the Bonner County Historical Society, said the exhibit gives the staff a chance to show off a different part of the collection. 

“We have one of the strongest archival collections in the region, and it's not like the flashy things that get to be on exhibit very often,” Combs said. “It's nice to get to see those paper documents out and to be able to show the public how much you can learn from them.” 

Fee said highlighting preservation was one of the main focuses behind the creation of the exhibit. Combs added that most, if not all, of the exhibits were never intended to be displayed in a museum. 

“Photographers, they weren't out taking photos to be stored in the museum later; they were taking portraits of families, or they were documenting time spent,” Fee said. “We call them our unexpected historians, because without those, we wouldn't understand our culture and history.” 

Combs said they always try to build exhibits around current happenings and that the previous exhibit surrounding play was inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. She said that this exhibit was built around the amount of information on people’s phones and media literacy. 

“We kind of get bombarded by so much information, and it can be difficult to know what's real or not, what has been researched thoroughly or not,” Combs said. “Being able to look at primary documents that were actually printed or like hand drawn by someone, it kind of brings up these questions of what is true and what isn't?” 

Staff and volunteers began disassembling the old exhibit following the first free Saturday in February. From there, it’s been a mad dash to assemble the exhibit and create a unique feel in the same space. 

Combs said repainting the room from blue to brown took two days, which should help change the atmosphere in the room. Fee added that the exhibit focuses far more on displays rather than oral history. 

The large tree trunk, which is a museum staple, is set to stay, Combs said. She said the staff’s dream is to move the tree to a potential expansion in the future. 

“We figured it would probably only survive one time of being cut apart and reassembled,” Combs said. “It's just such a beloved so part of it too is that we have dreams if we're able to expand the building, to be able to move the tree into that space.” 

The exhibit opens on Thursday evening at 4:30 p.m. at the Bonner County Historical Museum. 

“This is your story," Combs said. "Every time that we have a temporary exhibit, it's a chance to come and see new things that tell part of the story of the people who live here.” 

    A slew of typewriters used by former Bonner County journalists and surveyors which will go on display on Thursday.