The IHC is bringing a unique Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit to six Idaho communities in 2010 and 2011 titled Journey Stories. Journey Stories will use engaging images, audio, and artifacts to tell stories that illustrate the critical roles travel and movement have played in building our diverse American society. The exhibit will visit the Boundary County Historical Society (Bonners Ferry), The National Oregon/California Trail Center (Montpelier), Blaine County Historical Museum (Hailey), Olde School Community Center (Fruitland), Jerome Public Library (Jerome) and the Hayden Branch Library (Hayden) between May 2010 and March 2011.

Journey stories – including tales of how we and our ancestors came to America – are a central element of our personal heritage. From Native Americans to new American citizens and regardless of our ethnic or racial background, everyone has a story to tell. Our history is filled with stories of people leaving behind everything – families and possessions – to reach a new life in another state, across the continent, or even across an ocean. The reasons behind those decisions are myriad. Many chose to move, searching for something better in a new land. Others had no choice, like enslaved Africans captured and relocated to a strange land and bravely asserting their own cultures, or like Native Americans, who were often pushed aside by newcomers.

Our transportation history is more than trains, boats, buses, cars, wagons, and trucks. The development of transportation technology was largely inspired by the human drive for freedom. Journey Stories will examine the intersection between modes of travel and Americans’ desire to feel free to move. The story is diverse and focused on immigration, migration, innovation, and freedom. It includes accounts of immigrants coming in search of promise in a new country; stories of individuals and families relocating in search of fortune, their own homestead, or employment; the harrowing journeys of Africans and Native Americans forced to move; and, of course, fun and frolic on the open road.

The exhibit will be on display for six weeks in each of the six Idaho communities. While on display, each community will develop around the exhibit its own local programming, ranging from school projects, to lectures, films, local displays, and other activities limited only by the imagination.
Journey Stories is part of Museum on Main Street, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the Federation of State Humanities Councils. Support for Museum on Main Street has been provided by the United States Congress, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and The Hearst Foundation.

Journey Stories has been made possible in Idaho by the Idaho Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities “We the People” Program.

For more information contact jennifer@idahohumanities.org.