New Museum Tour

Please visit this new photo tour of the Odebolt Historical Museum!

Click for the tour!

Odebolt Historical Museum Roof Replacement

The museum building is in dire need of a new roof; the Board has received an estimate of $35,000 from Elevate Roofing.  The museum board has been busy researching and applying for grants and fundraising for the project.  

In order to apply for grants the museum needs to raise matching funds, so the museum is asking for your help by contributing to this worthwhile project.  The museum houses a wealth of Odebolt history and is a wonderful asset to those that do family research and to the community.  

Please consider making a donation to protect this resource. 
Donations may be sent to ...
Odebolt Historical Museum
P.O. Box 362
Odebolt Iowa 51458.

2014 Ornament and school trophies for sale

MUSEUM NEWS

17th edition of Limited Edition Collectible Christmas Ornament 
The new ornament for 2014 has arrived at the Odebolt Historical Museum in time for Creek Days.  This is the 17th ornament in the limited edition series and can be obtained at the museum or at Iowa State Bank on Main Street in Odebolt during open hours.  It may also be ordered by mail or email.  Cost is $15.00 each with a $3.00 charge for shipping.  Ornaments from previous years are also available if you have missed a year.  Contact information is below.  Proceeds from the sale of the ornament help with costs for museum operations.  Pre-orders may be picked up during Creek Days.

Please click the image to enlarge it.

Other items for sale
The museum also offers historic note cards, the history book published for the 2002 Quasquicentennial, and old school yearbooks from various years for sale.  Note that the yearbooks are reasonably priced ans are for sale to Odebolt or OA alumni only so as to avoid people buying quantities and profiting by selling on on-line auctions.

Museum receives photographs

(Courtesy of the 6-13-13 edition of THE CHRONICLE)

Click to enlarge the photo.

 Museum Receives Award-Winning Photographs
The Odebolt Museum has acquired nine historic photographs of the Odebolt and Arthur vicinity.  The 8 x 20 black and white photos were taken in the 1920's by A. B. Christenson and feature the Adams Ranch and some area activities. 

The collection also includes an award-winning photo taken in 1923 of about 30 mule teams harvesting oats on the ranch.  A. B. Christenson won $50 from the Des Moines Register for best agricultural photo of the year with that picture. 

Arthur Christenson (1896-1979) was born near Kiron, Iowa, the youngest of ten children, and lived most of his life in the area, spending 14 years in Lyons, Kansas before retiring to Battle Creek in 1961.  The pictures are given with permission by the family of his daughter, Bette (Christenson) Schmidt and her children, Dixie Brueck, Richard Schmidt, Jr., James Schmidt, Susan Schmidt, John Schmidt and Betsy Dettman.

Historic Ornaments

The Odebolt Museum announces that the 16th Edition of their series of historical Christmas ornaments will feature Odebolt's new Iowa Rural School Museum.  The ornaments are available for a cost of $15.00.  Sales of the ornaments benefit Odebolt Museum's projects.

For mail orders:   Add $3.00 to price for shipping
Send request with check to:
History Museum
PO Box 362
Odebolt, IA 51458

You may also pick up ornaments at Iowa State Bank, 219 S. Main Street in Odebolt.

Museum news

Click the image to enlarge it.  

The Odebolt Museum announces the 15th annual Christmas ornament featuring the old Cook Ranch house.  It is available for purchase during regular business hours at Iowa State Bank in Odebolt.

Charles Willard Cook of Chicago, Ill., purchased 7,680 acres of land for $5 an acre in 1873. He divided the farm into half-section farms for his tenants and hired help and built a complete set of buildings on each half-section. Cook erected his own residence on the southeast corner of section 33, Cook Township. The home was destroyed by fire in the early 1890s and replaced by a smaller house.

Cost is $15.00
For mail orders:   Add $3.00 to price for shipping
Send request with check to:
History Museum
PO Box 362
Odebolt, IA 51458

Questions?  Contact the curator, Kathy Larson

Visit the Odebolt Historical Museum web page

Obituary project completed

A joint effort has recently been completed to place nearly 4,000 obituaries on "The Odebolt History Pages" web site. Covering the years of 1942 to 2004, the obituaries are of people from Odebolt and surrounding areas in Sac, Crawford & Ida County, Iowa. There are also many obituaries of people with area connections.

The obituaries were collected by Betty Raasch from Odebolt and donated to the Odebolt Museum. Betty had clipped them from newspapers, mounted them on construction paper and had them organized in 3 boxes, 1942 through 1980, 1980 through 1990, and 1990 through 2003.  They were alphabetized in each box.

Stephanie Fleenor and her mother, Deb Reinhart have been doing their own family history and thought it was only appropriate to place this collection on the web site to help other family historians.  Steph talked to Kathy Larson, Museum Curator, who gave the Museum's permission.

Steph and Deb placed each page in a sheet protector and numbered the pages. The obituaries were indexed listing the name, maiden name (if known), birth date, death date, and cemetery where buried, and placed in numbered binders.  Steph then scanned each obituary page into the computer and gave them index numbers.  Barb Horak converted the indexes into web pages, uploaded the images and provided links from the names to the obituary images.

The museum sponsors "The Odebolt History Pages", edited by Odebolt natives Barb Horak, from Cedar Rapids and her sister Bonnie (Girvan) Ekse, Ankeny. The web site has been on-line since July 2001. In that time it has grown to nearly 450 web pages containing the history of the Odebolt area as well as hundreds of historic photos. The addition of the obituaries adds over 900 more pages.

The obituaries can be accessed at Odebolt Museum Obituaries