New exhibits come to Presque Isle County Historical Museum

Visitors to the Presque Isle County Historical Museum this month will find three new exhibits and two others that have been expanded or moved. A third new exhibit is scheduled to open during Nautical Festival. The largest of the new exhibits documents the histories of Michigan Limestone?s Calcite Plant and the Bradley fleet.

For the first time in its history, the museum has dedicated an entire exhibit room to telling the stories of Michigan Limestone and Bradley Transportation. The exhibits are largely based on photos from the museum?s Calcite Collection, an archive of over 40,000 images taken by Calcite photographs between 1911 and the early 1970s. A third new exhibit is titled ?The Curator?s Collections,? and includes representative examples of baseball caps, coffee mugs, and ship photos in museum Curator Mark Thompson?s private collections.

Thompson said that his collections of baseball caps and coffee mugs aren?t huge, but that they give him a great deal of enjoyment: ?Most of them are from places that my family and I have visited, or things we?ve done over the years. There are a lot of memories attached to them.?

Thompson?s collection of ship photos is a different story, however. ?I?ve never counted them, but I?m sure I have more than 10,000 photos,? he said. ?They fill three four-drawer file cabinets and probably include photos of a thousand different ships.? Thompson said that he took most of the photos himself during the years that he sailed on the Great Lakes. Others, mainly photos of ships from prior to the 1960s, were purchased or traded for from other collectors or archival collections.

The purpose of this little exhibit is to let people in the community know that the museum is interested in their collections, possibly even to display them. ?I?m sure that many local residents have collections that visitors to the museum would be interested in,? said Thompson.

The ?Curator?s Collections? exhibit was set up by Steven Altman, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan who is working at the museum for the summer. Altman also was involved in expanding the museum?s exhibit about Sears, Roebuck houses in Rogers City. ?We?ve been able to identify some additional Sears, Roebuck h

omes in town,? said Thompson, ?and we?ve also added photos of many local homes we think are Sears, Roebuck houses based on their architectural details.? The museum?s permanent lumbering exhibit has recently been moved into a new location in the adjacent pioneering room.

Tyler Wolfe, a graduate of Lake Superior State University and another of the museum?s summer staff, is currently updating interpretive materials in the exhibit. According to Thompson, everyone at the museum will be involved in developing an upcoming exhibit about Rogers City native and former professional football player Mark Smolinski.

That exhibit is scheduled to open on Saturday, August 8, during the Nautical City Festival. Smolinski and his wife will be on hand for the opening.

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