Historical society finds new home

An organization dedicated to preserving the town’s history will now showcase their treasures in a new location.

The Brandon Museum, which is an endeavor of the Brandon Historical Society, reopens to the public from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 2, in the building recently vacated by the Brandon Valley Area Chamber of Commerce at 109 N. Pipestone St. The museum will be open those same hours the first Saturday of every month.

The BHS was displaced from its former location in the 1916 Brandon School building in May of 2016, after which it was demolished. The school, which was located on the south side of Brandon Elementary, had deteriorated to the point that refurbishing it was not financially possible, according to Ty Hentschel, operations manager for the BV School District.

The BHS, which took occupancy of its new location this summer, is leasing the building from the city of Brandon.

“Over the summer we have been in the process of putting our touches on it, painting the walls and ceiling, and we cleaned carpets after the city graciously allowed us to rent it for a $1 a year,” said BHS president Jeremy Risty.

In July, Risty recruited BVHS football players wanting to perform community service, to help move some of the BHS’s museum items from the former fire hall (on Main Avenue), where the city has allowed them to store their inventory.

“We have all that stuff moved in and it’s relatively arranged, but we don’t have everything there,” Risty said. “Given the fact that it’s a fairly tight space (approximately 800 square feet), especially compared to what we had before, we will identify which artifacts and items we want to rotate in. We’ll try to keep it relatively fresh.”

Risty anticipates displays will be changed every six months to a year.

When patrons visit the museum in September, they’ll see a variety of pictures and artifacts about Brandon Valley High School and the school district. 

“We have some old photos, pennants, a football helmet, the old switching station for the first telephone line here in Brandon, and if you recall from our old place we had a bunch of class composites. So, our goal is to find some sort of ‘Rolodex’ for something like that, so when people come back for a school reunion, they can flip through there and find their class photo,” he said. “We didn’t want to over-pack it and we didn’t know how much stuff we could fit in there, but now that we have identified what we have there and how much space we have left, we can bring more stuff over. We do have some more room and will continue to identify things that helps identify the story of Brandon.” 

In their former location, the BHS had the luxury of designated Book Room, and subsequent book sales, which is one of the few avenues the BHS is supported financially. Donations and membership dues ($15 annually) is the other. Risty said the membership continues to explore ideas to restore The Book Room and their book sales. 

“We’re still debating that,” he said. “Where we are now is not conducive to a large-scale book room but we have thrown around the idea of holding occasional book sales at the old fire hall. The issue is that we would obviously have to talk to City Hall about that to make sure they’re OK with that because it would increase the traffic around there. Granted, it would be on a Saturday, so they’re not there, but we want to make sure we’re being good tenants and making sure we’re all on the same page and communicating with them. I will say that the book sale is not ‘dead’ but we just need to figure out in which way we need to continue to that. … We really don’t get a lot of revenue, which is one of the reasons we want to continue the book sales and need to, so we can continue to do what we want to as a Society.”

While their new museum space is smaller than what the BHS previously had, Risty said they are grateful to have the exposure.

“It’s not ideal, but it’s perfect for where we are now and the major thing is that we have a physical presence in the city.”

Nels Graff cabin

The BHS now has not one, but two “homes,” the second being the historic Nels Graff cabin that was moved to Pioneer Park in Brandon in late October 2016. Since the move nearly a year ago, the cabin has largely sat idle as the Society secured grants and a contractor.

Risty said the BHS has received $15,000 to $20,000 in grants, and a local contractor recently agreed to tackle the project.

“A lot of our grants came in April and May, and that’s when contractors are just getting busy,” Risty said. “We eventually found a local contractor, Greg Lacey, who is thrilled and very eager to help us out, and we were thrilled to find him as well.”

The grants almost came easier than the contractor, Risty added.

“This is a very important project, but as far as contractors are concerned, it’s small potatoes and it’s one that would require some historical knowledge. You have to have a little bit of understanding about what buildings looked like back then and that nature, so there was some knowledge that was beyond the comfort level of some contractors,” he said.

Restoration of the cabin will begin on the outside, starting with the roof and re-chinking the cabin, which is repair of the mortar in between the logs. “Hopefully we’ll be able to seal it up to protect those logs, but we don’t know if it’s even going to need that,” Risty said. “The movers said it was one of the most solid buildings they’ve ever moved in their lives, and when you look at the building, it’s super interesting because you can see the dovetail joints. They actually used dowels. They drilled a hole into the bottom (of the log) and then they drilled a hole into the top log and they put a stick in between and stacked it on top. It’s just amazing.”

The logs have lasted the test of time.

Justin Lovrien, who teaches high school science at Brandon Valley, asked if he could have a piece of the wood that came loose from one of the cabin’s corners.

“He wanted to use it in his class to have them identify what kind of wood it is, and it’s burr oak, which is all along Splitrock Creek. When the movers came in, they had to flat cut some of those logs and all of their saws wouldn’t cut it because the wood was just that thick. They actually had to get concrete cutting saws,” Risty informed.

Risty said restoration work is expected to start in the next week or two.

“We’re really hoping that we can get started on it here at the end of the month and work on it until the snow flies. It’s not a very big roof, and if we have some volunteers, we’re hoping that we can get it done in a morning,” he said.

Risty said it’s unknown if the grant money the BHS has received thus far is enough to cover the restoration.

“That’s a good question that we don’t have the answer to,” he said. “It’s solid but this is a 140, almost 150-year-old building, and once we get into particularly the interior, we don’t know what we’ll find. So, we’re hoping - fingers crossed - especially being a non-profit, that we can get some discounted materials and things of that nature, which could help offset those costs. But the fact of the matter is that we don’t completely have an accurate idea of our need,” he said.

The timeline for the cabin’s restoration is also unknown.

“A lot of it depends on those things (volunteers, funding) and any issues we might find digging in. Ideally, we would like to have as much done as possible by the end of next summer with an idea of possibly opening it up at the end of summer, early fall (2018),” he said. “We really want to get this project done because we see this as really a jewel of Pioneer Park.”

Once the cabin is restored and furnished, Risty said it will be utilized as “a living history piece, kind of like the cabin at Beaver Creek (Nature Area).”

“So, our goal is to restore the outside and then restore the inside to what it would’ve been like in the homesteading days and then put into it artifacts that would be like what they would have during the 1870s-1880s. We actually do have quite a bit of that stuff, and some we’ll need to look around for, but we do have enough to get it started,” he said.

The BHS currently is not accepting artifacts, essentially for storage reasons.

“At this point, we’re probably going to hold off, and the reason why is at this point we don’t have a whole lot of room in our new building, and if you’ve been to the fire hall, we’ve filled that pretty well, too. Granted, we put a dent in it with the stuff we’ve put in the museum but when we moved out (of the 1916 Brandon School) we actually had to give back a lot of the items that had been donated with the understanding that we could gain access to get those back,” he said.

In addition to volunteer labor, Risty said the BHS is always in need of financial support.

“Not to be that guy, but obviously we could always use donations and we could always use volunteer hours. So if anybody knows how to run a saw, wield a hammer, who wants to even just see what this really cool project looks like, because it so much potential to be really, really cool, if anybody is willing to donate money, time and materials, we would certainly accept those,” he said.