Learn the Origins

Virtual Exhibit

Learn the Origins of the Carter County Geological Society

In 2019, the Carter County Museum had an archive of 6,000 letters, documents and scrapbooks from 1930-1990 digitized with the eventual goal of creating a resource for current museum leadership and staff, researchers, and others of the first sixty years of the museum’s history. This sub-collection of 72 documents include letters written by museum founder and amateur paleontologist Walter H. Peck, who served as a senator to Montana’s State Legislature and was a lead author on the bill that established funding systems for county museums, leading the Carter County Museum to become the first county museum in the state. His correspondence and those of other founders and directors, reflect the early age of paleontology in Eastern Montana, the establishment and growth of a cultural and natural history collection, and relationships with collaborative partners across the country, including Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. 

This exhibit was created by Curtis Durham as part of a virtual student internship project at the CCM for the Johns Hopkins University Digital Curation graduate program.