When Darlene Heller, Shawano County Historical Society archives director, began work on the group’s display for this year’s Shawano County Fair, she was pleasantly surprised.
“I had no idea there were going to be that many bars,” she said.
Heller and her helpers gathered a plethora of information, pictures and artifacts for the display, “Bars, Ballrooms, Brothels and Breweries,” that will be featured in the fairgrounds’ Farmers Building when the 2014 fair opens Wednesday. The exhibit will include an old copper still.
“The purpose of these displays has been to encourage residents of Shawano County to treasure their local area history and to play a role in saving it,” Heller said. “If you destroy history you can never recover it.”
Heller said it made sense to group the exhibit topics together.
The bars filled a need for hotel customers and locals. As communities grew, ballrooms filled the need for a place where families could get together and celebrate. And, well, the brothels came along, too.
“Hotels were a catalyst for bars, and now you have the modern supper clubs,” Heller said.
The historical society’s annual display started with the sesquicentennial in 2003. It was very popular, so the next year the exhibit — featuring cheese factories — grew from being displayed in a tent to the spot where cheese used to be judged.
Other displays have featured schools, churches, logging and lumbering, trains and depots, the University of Wisconsin-Extension and several townships.
“There was a popular request from the public to have something like that every year,” Heller said. “We’re always willing to receive additional information on all the subjects we previously displayed.
“We took the archives to the fair and encourage the public to save that history and get it here.”
The archives, at 517 N. Franklin St., Shawano, are open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays and by appointment. For information, call 715-526-3323.
Categories
