Volunteers with the Heritage Museum and Cultural Center in St. Joseph are sorting through the institution’s vast archive as they prepare to vacate the museum’s property at 601 Main Street and move to a new location.

The Heritage is selling the building to the Curious Kids Museum, which plans to start renovations there this summer. Heritage Museum Board President Mike Garey tells us they’ve got thousands of documents, photos, and antiques from throughout St. Joseph and the surrounding area going back to the Civil War. Determining what will be moved to the new location, on Ship Street, and what will be placed elsewhere is the most immediate task for the Heritage.

“We want to go through everything that we have, and now we are putting out an RFP to hire a professional archivist to really dive deep into what we have and let us get ideas of how we can further preserve all the archives and how we can present them to our public,” Garey said.

Garey says the Curious Kids Museum has agreed to let the Heritage use the basement of the current Curious Kids location, on Lake Boulevard, to house some of the archive while all of this is going on.

“We’re taking a little pause, sitting back, understanding where’s the best place long-term to store the archives, and again, what kind of a plan, what’s available to present our our local history to both our residents and our visitors.”

The Heritage Museum says all historically significant archives will be safely preserved. However, Garey says there is a lot of material in the archive that’s not necessarily of historical value. Over the years, people have given the Heritage so many photos that it’s sometimes not known who is even shown in them. Garey says all that material will still be protected by eventually finding its way to other homes.

Meanwhile, the small team of Heritage volunteers continues preparing for the relocation to Ship Street with a few things already moved there.