he Museum’s Yearbook Collection:![]()
The Museum is thrilled to have received the recent donation of a 1947 Excelsior Springs High School yearbook! We’re still missing any yearbooks from 1903 or earlier, as well as yearbooks from 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1938, 1943, 1944, 1945 and 1949.![]()
After 1905, yearbooks were not published again until 1916, leaving a gap in school history that might be filled with donations of scrapbooks, autograph books, etc., from those years. Although we suspect that yearbook publication may have ceased during the Great Depression years of the 1930s and the war years in the 1940s, please be on the lookout for any of the “missing years” when you're cleaning out attics, basements, cupboards and closets to help the Museum tell the story of our local schools! Digitized copies of the yearbooks are available for browsing at the Museum.
Several volunteers at the Excelsior Springs Museum & Archives are descendants of Edwin O'Dell and also are members of the Osage Chapter Missouri State Society of Daughters of American Colonists (Osage DAC). Members of this lineage organization from all over Missouri will place an historical marker on the Edwin O'Dell log cabin at the golf course on Oct. 15. Learn more about the DAC and the cabin on Oct. 15 at the ceremony at 2 p.m. that day.
Happy 4th !!!The Museum will be closed on the Fourth of July, but we'd like to share this brief look back at how the holiday was marked 100 years ago. On July 4, 1923, thousands packed Excelsior Springs to spend a full day celebrating the nation’s birthday with patriotic speeches, band concerts and picnics in Siloam Gardens. There also was a “Houn’ Dog Parade” (Bennie Piburn’s dog took the top prize.) Sports enthusiasts watched a fierce competition between Excelsior Springs and Mosby ballplayers and three boxing exhibitions at the Auditorium. Merchants launched balloons with prizes awarded to finders. One enterprising merchant offered paint to turn you electic bulbs red, white and blue. The holiday crowd kept expanding throughout the day as more visitors disembarked from the Interurban to join the throngs. The fireworks display across Fishing River from Siloam Gardens was deemed a success: As the Standard reported, “there were practically no accidents” with only one report of a burned eye from an exploding firecracker and only one child knocked down by a motor car . . . Have a safe Fourth, everyone!
The Museum will be closed on the Fourth of July, but we'd like to share this brief look back at how the holiday was marked 100 years ago. On July 4, 1923, thousands packed Excelsior Springs to spend a full day celebrating the nation’s birthday with patriotic speeches, band concerts and picnics in Siloam Gardens. There also was a “Houn’ Dog Parade” (Bennie Piburn’s dog took the top prize.) Sports enthusiasts watched a fierce competition between Excelsior Springs and Mosby ballplayers and three boxing exhibitions at the Auditorium. Merchants launched balloons with prizes awarded to finders. One enterprising merchant offered paint to turn you electic bulbs red, white and blue. The holiday crowd kept expanding throughout the day as more visitors disembarked from the Interurban to join the throngs. The fireworks display across Fishing River from Siloam Gardens was deemed a success: As the Standard reported, “there were practically no accidents” with only one report of a burned eye from an exploding firecracker and only one child knocked down by a motor car . . . Have a safe Fourth, everyone!