Portage County (Wisconsin) Historical Society Photo Collection

About the Collection

The Portage County Historical Society Photo Collection consists of several thousand images of the people, places and activities of Stevens Point and Portage County from the 1880's to the present.   The Web exhibit currently displays over 200 of the images, searchable by subject and description.  The site is best viewed at 800 x 600 resolution or higher.

The collection includes original and copy prints, original and copy film negatives, historic postcards and glass plate negatives.

The Portage County Historical Society was established in 1951, and the Photo Collection is housed in the Archives of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point University Library.

The Web Exhibit of the Portage County Historical Society Photo Collection is a cooperative project of the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point University Library and Archives, and the Portage County Historical Society in celebration of the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial™.   Our thanks to: 

• the City of Stevens Point Historic Preservation/Design Review Commission, which initiated and financed the digitizing of the images.

• the Sesquicentennial Commission of the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial™, for granting permission to use their Seal and trademark title.

• Jan Vogt, a student from the UWSP's partnership program with the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Germany, who implemented the database.

• David Timm, the Library's Senior Information Processing Consultant,  who prepared the images for the exhibit.

• Arne Arneson, Director of the University Library, who designed the interface and exhibit graphics.

• William G. Paul, University Archivist from 1975-1999, who prepared this page and assisted with the image descriptions and database subjects.

• Jack Curtis, Professor Emeritus of Communications Disorders and member of the Portage County Historical Society, who gathered the photos for a CD-ROM edition of the Collection, and who assisted with image descriptions.

• Tim Siebert, President of the Portage County Historical Society, who granted the permissions necessary to publish the collection on the Web.

• Christine Fredrick, a Computer and Information Science 499 student, whose independent project launched the exhibit.