The Waseca County History Center will open its doors on Saturdays, 12-3 p.m. in addition to regular hours during the run of its current exhibit, “Collecting Herter’s”. The exhibit previewed on Friday to area sponsors, participating Herter’s collectors and All-Event Fundraiser ticket holders, then to the public on Saturday and Sunday, August 23 and 24.
For a time, Herter’s, Inc. was known to every serious and amateur sportsman in the country and beyond as the ultimate source for anything a guy would need to fish, hunt, camp, trap, canoe, or snowmobile. Between 1937 and 1980, George Herter merchandized with an entertaining catalog that gave Brown Printing its start, printing over one million catalogs annually at its peak. Herter’s, Inc. was included in the Minnesota Historical Society’s 150 Things About Minnesota exhibit during the Minnesota Sesquicentennial celebration in 2008.
The goal of this first exhibit is to focus on the original Herter’s store and employees in Waseca County, Minnesota, now occupied by Winegar, Inc. on South State Street. With the assistance of area collectors, the exhibit presents photographs, fishing, hunting and camping paraphernalia, taxidermy of a bear, bison, caribou, antelope, fish and a turkey; also on display are animal pelts, a bear trap, archery, duck decoys, and duck calls. Herter’s desk is recreated with his mode of communicating with employees—night-time written notes left on their desks for them to read in the morning.The Waseca County History Center staff is planning subsequent Herter’s exhibits for the next two years: “The Essential Herter’s” next summer, and then a focus on George Herter and his outrageous books and publications. The history center archives contain original manuscripts, artwork and production art for many of those books. The filmmakers, who spent a week in Waseca videotaping past employees and customers, were inspired by reading Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices by George Leonard Herter several years ago. Having never heard of Herter’s before, they started researching and became intrigued. The community conversation has started and will continue over the next few years to remember the store created by an interesting man, who put Waseca, Minnesota on the map. If you haven’t experienced it yet, mention where you are from to anyone of a certain age in a wild place, and you’ll hear, “Waseca? Oh yeah, Herter’s!”
For more information about the Collecting Herter’s exhibit, call 507-835-7700 or visit www.historical.waseca.mn.us. The Museum is located at 315 2nd Avenue N.E., Waseca, MN; open Tues-Fri, 9-5 and Saturdays, 12-3. Adult admission $5; kids and WCHS members free.