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Conduct Research
The Museum's collections and archival materials are available to the community for research use.
fort collins history connection
A good first stop for your research needs is the Fort Collins History Connection, an online collaboration between the Fort Collins Museum & Discovery Science Center and the Poudre River Public Library District. This resource incorporates historical resources from the Library, the Museum artifact collection, and the Fort Collins Local History Archive.
Currently, records for about 1/3 of the Museum's 40,000 artifacts are available online; other digital resources include city directories, historic photos and maps, newspapers, geneology resources, transcripts of oral histories, and more.
Museum collections
The Fort Collins Museum collections hold approximately 40,000 objects, collected since the museum’s inception in 1941. The Fort Collins Museum collections are both specific, in that they focus on the Fort Collins area and Cache La Poudre Valley, and broad, in that they consist of a wide variety of materials and types of objects -- everything from massive seed sorting machines to delicate human hair jewelry, from stone tools dating back thousands of years to yard signs from the most recent local elections.
Most prominent among the Museum’s collections are the stone objects shaped by some of our area’s earliest people, which include many hundreds of artifacts collected at the famous Folsom-era Lindenmeier site, located just north of Fort Collins, as well as earlier objects representing the Clovis cultural complex. These collections are utilized by archaeological researchers from throughout the world, and consulted by Native American groups and individuals with ties to our region.
Historians interested in life at Camp Collins find the diaries and log books maintained by individuals stationed there of special interest. Researchers often consult the Museum’s locally focused historic clothing and textile collection as well. Household and personal artifacts dating from the mid-19th century to the present make up the bulk of the Museum’s collection, and offer researchers intimate insights into the lives of local residents.
Only a small percentage of the Museum’s Collections are on display at any one time. Objects which are not on display are cared for in one of our storage areas and are available for supervised, on-site research use. Anyone wishing to conduct research on any aspect of these collections can make an appointment to do so by calling Collections Curator Linda Moore at 416-2784 or emailing her.
local history archive
The Local History Archive, housed in the Fort Collins Museum & Discovery Science Center, is responsible for collecting, preserving, and disseminating historical information relating to Fort Collins and Larimer County. The Local History Archive contains four principal types of holdings: institutional records, the local history research collections, the photographic collections, and the special collections. The archive's resources are non-circulating, and must only be used in the archive unless stated otherwise. There are specific rules governing collection use.
