Floyd County Historical Museum voted Silos and Smokestacks ‘Site of the Year’

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County Museum has been named the Silos and Smokestacks People’s Choice “Site of the Year.”

“We couldn’t have done it without all the voting from the community and the hard work of all our volunteers,” said Sara Renaud, the museum’s interim director.

Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area celebrates the best in heritage development by presenting the “People’s Choice Site of the Year.” The honor is bestowed on the partner site that gets the most votes in an online public contest, among the five sites identified by Silos and Smokestacks each year.

Renaud said that the museum received about 68 percent of the vote.

“A big credit needs to go to Jennifer Thiele for all her hard work and energy here,” Renaud said.

Thiele, the former director, recently resigned her position at the museum to accept a job at the National Czech & Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids. The museum is looking for Thiele’s replacement.

The Floyd County Museum learned it was one of this year’s five finalist organizations in March. Other sites around the state of Iowa that were up for the recognition were the Ackley Heritage Center, the George Maier Rural Heritage Center in Elkader, the Iowa State Fair and Living History Farms museum in Urbandale.

The top three finalists were invited as guests to the Partner Site Annual Training on April 5 at the Waterloo Convention Center, where the winner was announced.

The mission of the Floyd County Historical Society is to keep alive an active interest in Floyd County history by collecting, preserving, and interpreting materials relating to Floyd County. The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

The museum has recently expanded its contribution to telling the agricultural history of Iowa, and more specifically Floyd County, through its education programs and public events, new exhibits, capital improvement and collections preservation projects, volunteer hours, visitor experience, and agricultural manual sales.

Over the last year, the museum has included a new education program for kindergarten through 12th grade students, hosted Heritage Fest for hundreds of people, had two free open house events, and started a popular, monthly, guest speaker series featuring local history.

The museum also completed a roof replacement and three chimney removals, as well as starting a new capital improvement project to prioritize and bring up to museum standards its collections spaces, which included hiring a contract worker. The museum increased its volunteer program to more than 70 active volunteers, who donated more than 2,000 hours helping with events, behind the scenes projects, research and the front desk.

Over the last year, the museum became home to a total of 17 new exhibits, including new and rotating exhibit spaces, ranging from monthly to six-month rotations. Staff also redesigned the gift shop, added a kitchen to be available for community room rentals, built a new website, and expanded its social media and marketing.

In addition, the museum continued to provide operations and technical manuals and build card sales for Hart-Parr, Oliver, White and Minneapolis Moline tractors and implements.