Rapid City Residents Share Historic Photos for Anniversary
Residents brought decades-old photographs to The Journey Museum for scanning as the city marks its 150th anniversary.
Updated on Nov. 9, 2026 in Scrapbooking
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Rapid City residents shared historic photographs of the city's homes, buildings, signs and landscapes at a scanning event at The Journey Museum on Sunday. The event was hosted by the Rapid City Historic Preservation Commission and the museum to celebrate the city's 150th anniversary.
Why it matters
The effort preserves local history held in private collections and makes it available to the public. Scanned images will be returned to their owners and added to a shared public record of the city's past.
Eligible photographs had to be at least 50 years old and show the city's homes, buildings, signs or landscapes. Scanned images are returned to owners, but the number of submissions and completion date were not stated.
The players
The Journey Museum
The Journey Museum is a history museum in Rapid City, South Dakota, that interprets the region's natural and cultural history.
Rapid City Historic Preservation Commission
The Rapid City Historic Preservation Commission is the city body that oversees the designation and protection of local historic resources.
The details
Participants brought images to The Journey Museum, where they were scanned and handed back. One example was a photograph of Baken Park, probably from the 1940s, shared by Linda Clarke from her late father-in-law Eldon Clarke's collection. The project is financed with federal funds from the National Park Service through the South Dakota Historic Preservation Office.
Timeline
Sunday: Photo scanning event held at The Journey Museum.
Scanned images to be added to the museum's digital collection and an interactive story map, with no date given.
Seasonal Patterns
The project is funded through the National Park Service's historic preservation grant program, which channels federal money to state historic preservation offices for local documentation efforts. Community digitization of family photo collections like this one has become a common way local governments document their own histories.
Rapid City residents with pre-1975 family photos of the city can bring them to a scanning program and get digital copies back. The resulting images will be publicly viewable through the city's website once the story map is published.
The takeaway
Old family photos of your own town can become part of the public record if you bring them to a local museum or historic commission. Check whether your community runs a scanning program before deciding to keep prints in a box.
Further reading
Explore more local memory-keeping projects in the Scrapbooking section.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Kotatv.
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