The Cultural Heritage Center was built underground to conserve energy and provide a secure environment for historical artifacts and documents. The museum gallery has been a popular attraction since the building opened in 1989, but it has taken awhile for word to spread about the research treasures stored in the archives. People come to research homesteading, railroads, Native American culture, and other topics, but most people are looking for their own ancestors, according to Valerie Hanson, research room administrator. Newspapers, censuses, and naturalization records are the most heavily used collections. But researchers can also find photographs, maps, atlases, county histories, city directories, and much more.
Some people come in for a few hours while visiting family in the area.
People may spend several days here and look through cartloads of boxes for the piece of information they need. One woman came with a long list, and she passed out assignments to her kids and her husband so that they could use every minute. Visitors to the archives web site also increased by 50 percent in the last year, and the information available online continues to expand. And every time we make information available in electronic form, we have more visitors who realize they need to see the original documents. Archives staff stay busy helping researchers find the right materials, but they also catalog new materials that arrive daily.