A new exhibit at the Jacksonville Area Museum showcases the Morgan County Courthouse and the hard work of area students.
The Routt Catholic High School AP U.S. History class unveiled this year’s class project in the form of a short-term exhibit at the museum on Wednesday afternoon.
Instructor Lisa Hall says this is the third year the class has created an exhibit in class, with the first year’s topic being Routt and then the Morgan County Fair last year.
She says the Morgan County Courthouse as a subject was an obvious choice for the class. “Several of the kids have connections to civil workers, so we chose the courthouse and started right away with trying to come up with text.
A couple of the boys came up with a storyline of what we wanted to tell, and then we kind of paired that with finding artifacts. We’ve had umpteen trips to the courthouse to find artifacts.”
Routt Junior Talon Thompson worked in the group who were assigned to do research on the history of the Morgan County Courthouse. “I was going through old documents, old photos- all that other sort of stuff, and then basically narrowing it down to a list of things for our other teams to start working on to present. People who typed up the information, people who printed it, people who put it together.”
“It feels pretty good, it does feel good to have something I worked on in the museum. It was nice being able to see it all coming together.”
Junior Owen Geirnaeirt also worked on the research group with Thompson and Jacob Brown. Owen has a special connection to the courthouse as his mother, the late Jenny Geirnaeirt, served as Morgan County Treasurer.
He says he is proud of the work that his class, and especially his group, did to see the exhibit come to fruition. “I feel like that was one of the most important parts because with my knowledge, I could help show people what it was about, and its good to be done.
We started in December, and my group of three was really the first to work on it. So now, here in Ma,y it’s really cool to see how we put something in the museum for Jacksonville, and people can see what we did to help out.”
Hall says the exhibit also had assistance from students at Jacksonville High School. The Woods II class created the wood bases for the displays.
The exhibit will run through July 31st. The Jacksonville Area Museum is in the Old Post Office building at 331 East State Street. Hours are Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 AM to 4 PM, and Sundays from 1 to 4.