Chippewa Valley Museum

Chippewa Valley Museum Looking for things to do in Eau Claire? Not just your every day attraction. Jack Arnold, president of the L.G.

Explore the history and culture of the Chippewa Valley through exhibits, events, and our research library at Chippewa Valley Museum. The Chippewa Valley Historical Society, founded in 1952, began to build support for opening a museum with a display in Eau Claire’s Public Library, followed by two “History on Display” exhibits in 1964 and 1965, and a display in the Barstow School in 1965.

1966 the

Chippewa Valley Museum opens its doors in the former Meader Candy Factory just north of downtown Eau Claire. Arnold Construction Company, housed upstairs, donates space on the first floor of the building for use by the museum.

1967 the building is sold, and the museum is without a home.

1968 – 1974 UWEC houses the Chippewa Valley Museum at 129 Chippewa Street in a house they had purchased for future development. While the museum had the use of three rooms they could only accommodate the displays and a total of 10 people at a time.

1972 ground was broken for the museum’s present location in Eau Claire’s Carson Park

1974 the Chippewa Valley Museum opens its doors to the public in its present location.

1976 the Anderson Log Home is donated to the museum

1977 the Schlegelmilch House, an example of an early 20th century merchant’s home in downtown Eau Claire, is donated to the museum

Today the Chippewa Valley Museum continues to gather memories, save ideas, and share stories to create a community that connects diverse audiences with all facets of the culture and history of the Chippewa Valley.

It's a fine day for a blood drive in a park. Walk-ins welcome, with openings between 11-12 and 1-4.
09/02/2026

It's a fine day for a blood drive in a park. Walk-ins welcome, with openings between 11-12 and 1-4.

Sammy the Cook will be joining our dinner party. Sammy passed away in Manhattan, Montana in 1908, where he had been work...
09/01/2026

Sammy the Cook will be joining our dinner party. Sammy passed away in Manhattan, Montana in 1908, where he had been working as a ranch cook since the 1880s. He was drinking heavily and obviously in poor health but refused to see a doctor. He passed away from a heart attack and the funeral director was called. The director had some questions.

A local Manhattan jeweler revealed that he had seen Sammy in Eau Claire when he went by Billy Williams, so the funeral director reached out to see what he could learn from our local residents.

For about twenty-five years Sammy lived in Eau Claire but went by the name Billy Williams. He worked in the logging camps as a cook, and he could spit to***co with the best of them. Billy earned enough money in the camps to buy a house and establish a savings account. He anonymously gave money to those who needed it in Eau Claire. But a secret came out in the late 1870s that caused him to flee the area. Before Sammy left the city, a family moved to the area from Iowa and reported Billy’s whereabouts to his family there. Billy’s brother arrived in Eau Claire. They talked, but Billy’s brother returned home alone.

The other part of the story concerned Ingebjorg Viko. Ingebjorg emigrated from Norway to Iowa in 1850 at the age of 17. She arrived with her fiancé Svein, his sister, and his mother. Then Svein’s mother dropped a bombshell: she had decided Ingebjorg wasn’t good enough for her son socially, and she was canceling the wedding. Ingebjorg was heartbroken , so she left.

Ingebjorg left Iowa, but it was Billy Williams that landed in Eau Claire. For the next fifty years, Ingebjorg would live the life of a man. She had accumulated 320 acres of land in Montana and had several business investments including part of the North Pacific Railway. However, no one knew that “Sammy” owned this property, so his funeral was paid for by friends.

Once Eau Claire learned of Sammy’s death, news quickly got to the remaining Viko family members in Iowa who sued and won to get Sammy’s assets. Was her story one of tragic heartbreak or extraordinary success? Diana, Editor
📷findagrave.com

Only 1 out of 3 Americans donate blood. You can be a part of the 33% who give blood by signing up for museum's September...
08/31/2026

Only 1 out of 3 Americans donate blood. You can be a part of the 33% who give blood by signing up for museum's September 2 blood drive. And yikes, that's only a few days away! Best sign up right now.

Chippewa Valley Museum's new exhibit is The U.S. at 250: From the Collections 1876-1926. “This is US at 250” social med...
08/29/2026

Chippewa Valley Museum's new exhibit is The U.S. at 250: From the Collections 1876-1926. “This is US at 250” social media series continues the exhibit theme. We will be looking at museum artifacts through the end of the year.

Today we are taking a look at a local product. In 1920 Seeley Chemical Co. was recruiting ambitious women to work in their traveling sales and advertising department.

In 1921, the company became Exito Chemical Co., and sales that year exceeded $49,000. The company claimed “no living thing can survive the gas we use. Flour mills find it 100% efficient in exterminating pests.” That wasn’t very comforting for me to read; “no living insect” would have made me happier.

When Irving Barager bought the company in 1937, their ant elimination product was described as “sanitary, odorless preparation to exterminate ants in less than 21 hours.” The company also manufactured DDT. Unfortunately DDT controlled pests too well.On a larger scale DDT killed insects which damaged crops and carried diseases like malaria and typhus. DDT did improve insect control, but it also wreaked havoc on wildlife populations, most notably the bald eagle. DDT poisoning contributed to decreasing the bald eagle population to 487 nesting pairs by 1963.

Exito’s DDT was recommended for house flies, mosquitoes, carpet beetles, gnats, clothes moths, bed bugs, silverfish, and fleas. Scientists like Rachel Carson tried to warn us earlier. In her 1962 book, Silent Spring, Carson said “By their very nature chemical controls are self-defeating, for they have been devised and applied without taking into account the complex biological systems against which they have been blindly hurled." Diana, Editor

DDT, Exito Chemical Co., CVM #4780-0092, 1940s

12 teens + 300 hours of service = one very happy museum and thousands of happy guests. Jayden, Aria, Evelyn, Connor, Dak...
08/28/2026

12 teens + 300 hours of service = one very happy museum and thousands of happy guests. Jayden, Aria, Evelyn, Connor, Dakota, Oliver, Iris, Alex, Emma, Elliot, Jensen, and Levi—thank you for being bright spots at the museum all summer long. We hope you received as much as you gave. -- Carrie, Director

Our Teen Guide Program (ages 13–17) runs every summer and gives teens hands‑on visitor engagement experience plus a behind‑the‑curtain look at museum operations. Many continue volunteering long after the program ends. Look for application materials next March.

📷 Graduation Day — Teens who complete training plus 30 hours of service earn recognition as Certified Teen Guides. Shown: Emma, Evelyn, Iris, Aria, and Levi. Not able to attend: Jayden, Connor, Elliot, Jensen, and Alex.

📷 Any history museum worth its salt includes historic games at any celebration. This year’s pick: old‑fashioned Mario Kart on Wii inside our Farmhouse Theater.

Help save a life. Make a blood donation at the Chippewa Valley Museum on Wednesday, September 2. A link to the schedule...
08/27/2026

Help save a life. Make a blood donation at the Chippewa Valley Museum on Wednesday, September 2. A link to the schedule calendar is in the comments.

People will be fighting to see who gets to sit next to Emory and Isabelle Olive, better known as Ham and Izzy. Emory wa...
08/25/2026

People will be fighting to see who gets to sit next to Emory and Isabelle Olive, better known as Ham and Izzy. Emory was born in Riverton, IL in 1905.

Olive started his career with a New York Yankees Triple A team in 1925. When he realized that professional baseball was not in his future, he joined the Benton Harbor House of David barnstorming baseball team, playing with the group for a decade, serving as centerfielder and manager. The team averaged 50-60,000 miles of travel with 180-200 games a year. During his time with the House of David, Olive became friends with Satchel Paige, who played for the Kansas City Monarchs.

In 1941, Olive got to know Herman White, who offered him a job as the umpire-in-chief for the Northern Baseball League. He says he was behind the plate for 1200 games for the league over the years. He got to know several famous players during his four decades of calling balls and strikes, including Hank Aaron who always called him “Mr. Hambone.”

The following year he married Isabelle Payne and she relocated to Eau Claire for his job, settling into a house on Fourteenth St. Both Ham and Izzy worked at White Machine, Herman’s company.

Isabelle was a well-known athlete as well. She managed and played for a women’s barnstorming basketball team, The Redheads. She appeared on one of the first Wheaties boxes in the late thirties. She was quoted on the box as saying, “Spot your shots for high scores.”

Ham also umpired games for the Cavaliers, the Babe Ruth League, local high schools and Little League. He was remembered for his tagline, “Once younger, but never better.” When he became a scout for the Baltimore Orioles, he was prohibited from umping but kept busy volunteering at local playgrounds. He later served on the board of directors for the Cavaliers.

Both Ham and Izzy are buried in Forest Hill Cemetery. If you ever considered being an umpire, I’ll leave you with a bit of advice from Ham: “If you don’t like it and don’t have your heart and soul in it, throw the mask away. You get called everything but sweetheart. . . [to be an umpire] you have to be thick-skinned or dumb.” Diana, Editor

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Chippewa Valley Museum's new exhibit is The U.S. at 250: From the Collections 1876-1926. “This is US at 250” social med...
08/22/2026

Chippewa Valley Museum's new exhibit is The U.S. at 250: From the Collections 1876-1926. “This is US at 250” social media series continues the exhibit theme. We will be looking at museum artifacts through the end of the year.

Today we are taking a look at a bicycle, the Monark Silver King. After producing electric radio and automobile batteries in the twenties, Monark decided to diversify and finally decided to partner with George Strong Lewis in 1932. Lewis was a bicycle designer who had been working on an aluminum bike. By 1938 they had a successful line and were producing seven percent of bikes in the country.

When WWII broke out, Monark was forced to accept a government contract to stay in business and they began producing parts for radar and electronic equipment. But they were making enough money that they could afford to keep a staff hired to prepare for post-war civilian production. When the war ended, they began manufacturing bicycles again quickly.

At one point, Monark provided 20% of the nation’s bicycles, but Schwinn overtook it in sales, and by the sixties, Monark Silver King Corporation was closed.
This girl’s Monark Silver King was bought at Murphy’s Bike Shop which was at the corner of First and Grand Avenue in Eau Claire. Diana, Editor

Monark Silver King bike, CVM #1200-0001, 1947

Then and Now: Bluedorn Florist greenhouseHermann Bluedorn entered the florist trade at fourteen in his native Germany. A...
08/21/2026

Then and Now: Bluedorn Florist greenhouse

Hermann Bluedorn entered the florist trade at fourteen in his native Germany. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1882, he eventually made his way to Eau Claire, renting space on Grove and Main Streets in the early 1890s to start his floral business.

In 1887, Hermann married fellow German immigrant Anna Moessner. By the mid‑1890s, the couple had purchased property at 416 Dodge Street, building a greenhouses on the northwest corner of Dodge & Gray and officially establishing Bluedorn Florist.

The historic photo shown here captures a greenhouse complex, and somebody once thought it was Bluedorn Florist, but we don't know why. We do know the Bluedorns operated one of only two florists in Eau Claire during the 1890s. Records do not indicate who gave the photo and the caption on the back is written in blue ballpoint ink, so identified long after the photo was originally produced.

If this photo is Bluedorn Florist at Gray & Dodge in 1900, the houses visible in the photo don’t match the homes at Dodge & Gray that are still standing today and were built by 1900. The greenhouses at Main & Winter shown on an 1891 map seem closer, but the intersection visible in the photo doesn’t align with that location either. Let's just say that some mysteries just stay mysteries.

The Bluedorn family business endured long after Hermann’s death in 1922—run by Anna, then their son Ernest, and later their grandson Bruce—lasting into the late 1970s. In the early 1980s, Grace Lutheran Foundation purchased the property, redeveloping it into Grace City View Apartments. Today, only the parking lot marks the spot where the Bluedorn greenhouses once stood. -- Nikki, volunteer & Carrie, Director

📷: Bluedorn greenhouse, maybe, somewhere on the Eastside Hill (Chippewa Valley Museum 551000-0012-001)
📷: Grace City View Apartments parking lot looking east, 1 August 2026

That's it for the 2026 Lakeview Cemetery Walking Tours. Three perfect weather nights, three sold-out tours, and three ou...
08/21/2026

That's it for the 2026 Lakeview Cemetery Walking Tours. Three perfect weather nights, three sold-out tours, and three outstanding volunteer guides all made for one really amazing cemetery tour season. Enjoy some scenes from the August 18 tour, including a beautiful photo of George Shaw's celtic cross monument taken by Ann Behrens.

A HUGE thank you to UWEC Special Collections & Archives Head Archivist Greg Kocken, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Emeritus Professor of HIstory Robert Gough, and UW-Eau Claire student Charlotte Hawley for giving so much of their time and talents to prepare and deliver these tours. The community is lucky to have you. -- Carrie, Director

Address

1204 East Half Moon Drive
Eau Claire, WI
54703

Opening Hours

Tuesday 5pm - 8pm
Wednesday 12pm - 5pm
Thursday 12pm - 5pm
Friday 12pm - 5pm
Saturday 10am - 5pm

Telephone

(715) 834-7871

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