Research Materials

Genealogy Resources - The Photo Collection - Clubs & Organizations - Family Collections - Businesses & Companies - Government Collections

The Map Collection - Research Library - Audiovisual Media

Access to the collection is free to HCHS members and students.
Non-members are asked to pay a nominal fee of $5.00 per day to conduct research within the Gross-Wells-Barnum House.

We offer research services for researchers who are not able to visit us in person. For $25/hour ($15 for members) our research assistant is available to research your questions. Digital copies of photographs may be purchased for research or personal use at $5.25. Digital images may also be purchased for commercial ($25) and non-profit ($20) publication. Submit a Media Use Request.

Exhibits

The Humboldt County Historical Society is primarily a research facility, however we do have two exhibits in the hallway that are regularly updated to provide new and interesting subject matter. Currently, the exhibits feature Early Humboldt County Breweries and Humboldt Druggists. We also have a collection of historical photos and maps hung in the public rooms of the research facility.

Due to vulnerable staff members,
masks are encouraged while visiting the research facility.

Check out our Virtual Exhibit, or History Nuggets, a online series of historical excerpts by Assistant Archivist Pam Service.

With the last two years of covid shutdown, the HCHS has received far fewer donations to its collection than usual. But now that things are slowly opening up again, we hope that folks who have spent some confined-inside time sorting through attics and drawers, will start bringing in items to add to our historical archives. 

One thing that particularly concerns me is photographs. Recently technology has been changing in a way to imperil our visual preservation of history. When people used film cameras instead of digital cameras or phones, it produced prints that eventually could be passed onto heirs or historical societies. But now, I fear that fewer images of our present times will leap the technological hurdles and be preserved for our future. The same goes for written records. Letters and diaries could be easily preserved and passed on.  But emails and blogs?   

Time will tell. But in the mean time, do continue to bring in photographs, documents and historical material to be preserved at the Historical Society. And about those photographs: if you can, please mark on the back who or what they are portraying. Sadly, we have many boxes of unidentified local photos that would be far more meaningful if there was some identification with them.  

To paraphrase Smokey Bear, "Only YOU can preserve our past for our future."