by KELLY FRIESEN
Journal editor
The Humboldt and District Museum & Gallery earned a prestigious award for its project dubbed "Original Humboldt."
On behalf of the museum, a local group, consisting of Alvin Hingley, Dennis Korte, Edward Novecosky, Garry Jenkins and Jennifer Hoesgen, put in immense work to create a replica of a former historical site that was extremely important to the Humboldt area in the fur trade era. The site of Original Humboldt includes a steel frame of a building, a red river cart and interpretation signs over eight acres of land. The site earned the accolade because of how it demonstrates education, signage, monuments and interpretation.
"We won the award because of how we've taken eight acres of farm land and interpreted the site so that people can come out to the site through an access area and can read the all of the interpretive signs," said Hoesgen, director of the Original Humboldt committee. "We now installed two art installations. One is the shape of the cabin; we had an artist actually curate the shape of the cabin, and we placed it in the area where the actual cabin would be. We also had a red river cart built."
Original Humboldt, which is located roughly eight kilometers south of Humboldt, is the only historical site in Canada to mark the development of an original telegraph line. George and Catherine Weldon built the original cabin that was used in the telegraph system. General Middleton went on to establish a fortified camp, which played the role of centre of communications, at the site in 1885.
Original Humboldt originally started to earn praise at Heritage Week in Saskatoon this winter.
"I did a presentation about Original Humboldt at Heritage Week in Saskatoon in February," said Hoesgen. "Our archeology work is funded by the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation, so they asked me to do a five-minute presentation on how their funding helps the project."
Shortly after the presentation, Original Humboldt was nominated for the award.
"Then after the five-minute piece someone came up to me and said 'you should' nominate this for that award.' So I later chatted with the Mayor (Malcolm Eaton) and he nominated us for the award," said Hoesgen.
