Ready for another Behind the Scenes look at what happens at the museum?  Well here we go!  Here at the museum we have a photograph collection, with lots of great photographs that depict Sherman County and Goodland history.  Some of the photographs focus on people, equipment, agriculture and businesses around Goodland.  Today I found a photograph that I liked and that had ties to Goodland today.

This photograph is inside the pool hall of Herb Garrett, standing on the left, from the 1930s.  His father, Grant Garrett, is standing on the right and this pool hall was located at 916 Main Street.  The solid brass foot-rail came from the jury box at the old Sherman County Courthouse.  While no longer a pool hall, 916 Main Street is still owned by Garrett but is now a liquor store and a laundromat.  I liked this photograph because it showed a business that is still operating today and had a unique artifact from the old courthouse. In another fun connection, the High Plains Museum features a counter from the old courthouse. It is neat to see Sherman County history spread throughout the town.

You can see other photos from the High Plains Museum collection online at our Flickr page. The museum is putting photographs up on flickr to get the photograph collection out to the public.  While accompanying photographs to the pool hall may not be up, photographs that detail baseball, the hospital and sites in Sherman County are available.  Photographs are a great way to show history and the people who made it.  We get to see our ancestors when they settled this county and what happened up to today.

It certainly is remarkable to see how Goodland, and Sherman Co., have changed over the years. If you have any photographs that you would like to share with us, we would be happy to take a look. If you’d like to donate photographs, or allows us to copy them for our archive, please contact our director, Karen Anderson.