The Beltrami County Historical Society received a Minnesota Cultural & Heritage Grant.
The funding will be used to digitize 150 oral history tapes in the BCHS archives.
Most of the interviewees were recorded by Dr. Charles Vandersluis, a founding member of BCHS and author of several local history books.
He interviewed Native American inhabitants, early settlers, and local community members and business owners.
According to a release, only a few of these tapes have been heard, and the reel-to-reel tape technology Dr. Vandersluis used in the 1950s is long out of date.
After digitization, these original stories will be publicly accessible for the first time.
BCHS Board President Dan Allosso said, “These tapes contain almost 150 stories with content on Beltrami County’s history and residents that we know virtually nothing about…. and not only will this project help us save the stories, but will also help save the very voices in which the stories were told.”
