Danelle Erickson is the new executive director of the Meeker County Museum

Among her favorites are the different Fourth of July celebrations and parades that took place through the years. Another is Litchfield’s Brightwood Beach Resort, which opened in 1889 and was described as a “gem of a lake with pebbly shores and blue as the vaults of heaven.” While its cache was high, the resort was not financially successful and closed in 1893. All that remains today of this five-year wonder is the historic octagon building on the southern shore of Lake Ripley.

While Erickson is getting to know local history, she’s also getting the word out about the museum by talking to local groups such as Litchfield Rotary and KLFD Radio.

“I’m excited to be in the area and get connected,” she said. “I’m looking for those opportunities to introduce myself and remind people that we are here. Even if you have visited us before, there’s so much to see you probably won’t remember it all.”

STEEPED IN HISTORY

Taking the job at the Meeker County Museum brings Erickson back to her roots in Dassel. Her family moved there when she was in second grade. Looking back, she says history has been part of her life for as long as she can remember. Highlights include summer vacations to historic sites such as Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

“I was a big a reader growing up of historical fiction,” she recalled.

After graduating from Dassel-Cokato High School in 1998, Erickson headed to the University of Northwestern in St. Paul. It’s not surprising she majored in what she knew best — history — with a minor in accounting.

Following her college graduation in 2002, Erickson worked at an antique store for a year, and later purchased The Grounds coffee shop in Cokato, which she owned for eight years before moving on to her next career.

“I was ready to see what else was out there,” she said. “I had an opportunity to sell it and I didn’t have to jump into anything right away. It was a job posting in Mankato that got me into the museum world.”

HISTORY AS A VOCATION

Erickson joined the Blue Earth Historical Society as the operations manager and spent almost nine years working at the museum in Mankato.

It was her first time working in a museum. Looking back, she said the whole staff tried a lot of new things. Erickson learned to operate a website, databases, and how to run different events and programs.

“We all worked together and had our own pieces we did,” she recalled. “I learned a lot from the director, watching how she ran the organization and communicated with people.”

Erickson said she can’t remember where she saw the job posting for the Meeker County Museum. She had always wanted to move back to the area, so she applied. She interviewed in December and started her new job Jan. 11.

“For me starting out as a director, it was a good-sized organization,” she said. “It felt like a good fit.”

If you’re worried things are going to change with a new director on board, you can relax. Erickson doesn’t see herself making major changes in the museum.

“I think eventually it will be only swapping out a corner here and there,” she said. “We’re working on an overall inventory to know what’s here and what can be changed around down the road. Nothing is planned in the coming weeks, but it’s something to keep an eye on. Sometimes it’s just an idea that springs at you.”

For now, it’s business as usual with the monthly Civil War Roundtable meetings, publishing the quarterly newsletter Meeker Memories, helping people with their genealogy research, and hosting the annual Memorial Day picnic.

In other museum business, there was that problem with the Ladies of the G.A.R.

The executive committee of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, the oldest hereditary, congressionally sanctioned organization in the United States, observed during their national meeting in Litchfield, the Memorial Hall at the G.A.R. had been overrun, in the opinion of at least some members, by unacceptable items that change the hall’s appearance beyond what is expressed in the deed. The women drafted a letter to Litchfield Mayor Keith Johnson and City Council members asking the city to follow the 1885 agreement and remove items from the Memorial Hall that are “both new and of different time periods” in a timely manner.

It fell to Erickson to forge a compromise, which happened during a meeting a couple of weeks ago.

“We met with them recently, sat down and talked through things,” she said. “We knew before that our goal is the same, preserve and share history. When you have the same goal, you’re not that far apart coming together to work things out.”