Platteville Pioneer Museum

About Us

The town's collective basement will no longer hide Platteville's first fire truck. Nor its first soda fountain, an antique jukebox, an old grinding stone for sharpening sickles or hundreds of other collectibles.

Members of the Platteville Historical Society and town leaders broke ground Monday on an expansion project that will double the size of the Platteville Pioneer Museum.

The 3,764 square-foot addition will also unburden the basements, attics and storage sheds of historical society volunteers who've been saving up their memorabilia since the museum became overcrowded five years ago.

"I think I'll bring in a wooden chair from when my parents got married," 76-year-old Ruth Rhoades said, adding that the chair dates back to 1919.

"This is so exciting," said Mary Jenkins, the historical society member whose grant proposal brought $264,000 from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs to the museum project. "The (historical society) ladies are so ready. It was just a dream, but they knew they would do it, and they have."

Private donors will pay for the remainder of the $450,000 expansion, slated for completion by mid-July.

Museum volunteers say they'll spend August transferring items from their homes and storage sheds to the enlarged museum, and hopefully, invite the public in the first exhibit there by September.

"We're all in our 70's, so we want to see it completed before we move on to the next world," volunteer Jean Brown joked.

Though only 2,700 people live in Platteville, the 135-year-old town-- founded by potato, sugar beet and cucumber farmers-- boasts a historical society of 140 members.

Left to right: Irene Sterkel, Dorothy Brotemarkle, Dianne Norgren, Carol Harris, Meg Green, Niles Miller,
Raymond Miller, Sally Miller, Ruth Freauff, Ruth Rhoades, Jean Brown, Mary Jenkins and Nick Meier

Voluntarily staffed by the Platteville Historical Society, our museum houses artifacts, family histories, photographs, old newspapers and other memorabilia of the people of the Platteville area.

Platteville, founded in 1871, is one of te oldest communities in Weld County. It is situated on the line of the Denver Pacific Railroad and overlooks the Platte River. It was once the hunting grounds of Indian tribes. Trappers and traders crossed on well known trails.

Some families in the Platteville area can trace their local roots back even further than the founding of the town with ancestors arriving in 1859, possibly enroute to the gold fields. Instead, they stopped in the Platteville area and became farmers and ranchers.

Long time residents can list many changes viewed in their lifetimes. Some of those changes are now being cataloged and displayed at the Platteville Pioneer Museum