PF museum moves to new spot

POST FALLS – Post Falls history has a new home. After bouncing around for years, the city’s historical museum has moved to 214 E. Railroad Ave.

“This is the fourth spot for our modular building,” Post Falls Historical Society President Sharon Alexander told a recent museum visitor.

Previously on the City Hall campus, the museum was moved this summer to make room for construction of the new City Hall, set to open in spring.

To ease the pain of displacement, the city donated a prefabricated building to house the museum until it can return to permanent quarters in the city center.

“But we had to find a place to put it and pay to move it,” Alexander said of the mustard-colored prefab building housing the museum, across the street from the Post Falls Eagles Lodge.

The Historical Society spent about $12,000 to get the building transported, anchored, wired and ready to open, Alexander said.

Additional gifts of time and materials from people in the community made the museum handicapped-accessible and more attractive, she said.

Beginning in September, the museum will give tours by appointment.

Rare old photographs of Post Falls, posters from a prominent canning factory and all sorts of other artifacts – including logging gear, primitive mining supplies and kitchen utensils – fill the museum.

Portraits of the city’s founder, Frederick Post, a German immigrant who gained the respect of local Indian tribes, also are on display, said Alexander.

A rustic log canoe a resident carved from a tree when he was a boy is the first thing that stops museum visitors interested in a good story.

Meanwhile, armchair historians can listen to the oral histories of early Post Falls residents preserved on videotape, Alexander said. Loggers, farmers, the first storekeepers and other early residents recount their memories of the region.

“If you don’t preserve your past, how do you move on to the future?” Alexander asked rhetorically.

Old-timers will relish photos of such spots as the Hotel Mount Vernon, the Pony Saloon and the electric train depot.

“I feel we’re very blessed that we’re able to stay open to show the past of Post Falls, … link it with the future,” Alexander said.

Next year, she said, she hopes to open the museum on a regular basis from April through October.

Efforts like this are vital to communities, especially those like Post Falls where lots of people are moving in from other places, said Post Falls Library director Joe Reiss.

Museums, he said, help communities “find the common thread of history that binds them together.”