Lavaca Historical Museum spruces up exhibits

The Lavaca Historical Museum has been working hard to spruce up their exhibits since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We just didn’t have any visitors during the pandemic. We shut down for three months and we started coming back one at a time,” Museum coordinator Tracy Stephenson said. “After the shutdown, we started revamping our military exhibit. We literally took everything out and started with a blank space. It was a complete redo and that took about three or four months.”

Before the pandemic, the museum had about 800 to 900 patrons per year. Since the pandemic, it’s been hard to maintain those numbers.

“Not only did the pandemic stop the foot-traffic of people coming in, but it also stopped school tours ,” Stephenson said. “Now, it’s slowly starting to pick up.”

The way they are re-doing the exhibits is more sophisticated and organized, instead of a random mish-mash of information.

“We have gone in and totally redone our veteran and military sections,” Museum administrator Janice Saunders said. “In doing so, we’ve cleaned everything and did whatever needed to be done to take care of the items. We researched the individuals who owned the items and uniforms. We discovered in doing all this stuff that we had a little bit more of World War I and II stuff than we realized. We also have a new storyboard that includes pictures and information about different people in the war.”

Along with the war exhibits, the museum has touched up on updating their rodeo and baseball exhibits.

“The heyday of the baseball exhibits we have go through the 1920s to the 1940s,” Stephenson said. “There was a league of a group of guys that played baseball during this time and they started an organization called the old-timers association. These guys kept track and gathered information of these players for us. Unfortunately, it got to the point where there were less members and they asked us if we would continue the exhibit.”

“Not only do we have records of these players, but we also have artifacts. They donated jerseys, bats, shoes, baseballs, and pictures. They also did tons and tons of scrapbooking. We are accepting any information that people have of the early years of this baseball organization. When people come in and see these sentimental items, I think they will be more excited to bring their artifacts into the exhibit.”

The museum decided to change their presentation because they felt that some of the exhibits were kind of stale.

“We have re-done and made a total of eight new exhibits,” Saunders said. “We need people to come in and are looking for more information and pictures from the war or old sports photos. We accept loans of artifacts and if there’s any photos people have, we can scan them, and they can keep their photos.”

There is a lot of history that the museum hopes to add to each of their exhibits. They are asking those who have any memorabilia or stories to add to their exhibits to feel free to donate or just share their experience.