Marysville History Museum

Photo: Anita J via Google Maps

The Marysville History Museum is where the Marysville Historical Society keeps the story of Greater Marysville: the photographs, objects, documents, textiles and oral histories that show how the town became the city it is today. The museum sits at 6805 Armar Road, right beside Jennings Memorial Park, and it is run by the Society’s volunteers.

It is a small community museum, and that is the appeal. You can walk in, look over old telephone equipment and photographs of Marysville’s logging days, and then ask the volunteers on hand about a street, a family or a photograph. It makes an easy pairing with a walk in the park next door, and it is one of the stops worth slowing down for in our Marysville guide.

What You’ll See

• The Great Hall. When the museum opened in 2017, its main hall was lined with building facades, including a church, a bank, a city hall and storefronts. The display cases were built on wheels so the exhibits could change two to three times a year, and the museum still describes its displays as rotating.
• Telephone history. The museum holds equipment and exhibits from the Norwesco Telephone Museum collection, and its opening layout included a phone operator’s station.
• Period rooms. At its opening the museum also had a pharmacy styled like an old soda fountain, complete with stools, along with a dentist’s office, a beauty salon and a room of musical instruments.
• Photographs and archives. The Society’s photographic collection covers street scenes, logging crews, a Stimson Mill Company log train, freight at the Great Northern depot and Marysville High School in 1914. The archives add newspapers, maps, letters, ledgers and directories, and the objects range from tools and household goods to signs and uniforms.

You can also start from home. The Society’s website has a searchable inventory of its Marysville Globe newspaper holdings with digitized issues, an index of mayors, postmasters, fire chiefs and other local names, and digitized booklets from the museum library, including a 1982 self guided tour of Marysville and the 1950 Strawberry Festival souvenir program.

The Story Behind It

The Marysville Historical Society formed in 1974 and spent decades collecting and storing local history without a permanent home. It bought the Armar Road property in 1986 as the site for a future museum, and for years it showed its collection in a small storefront on Third Street, which a Herald columnist called a “museum in waiting” in 2008. Planning for the new building began in 1999, a recession put the capital campaign on hold, and construction finally started in 2014. The Marysville Noon Rotary Club gave the largest share of the money, and local companies donated labor and materials.

The museum opened in June 2017. Much of the credit goes to Ken Cage, who became the Society’s president in 2002, served for 17 years and was instrumental in getting the museum built. The Society’s work reaches beyond the building, too. It cares for the Gehl Home, an 1884 pioneer house, and it helped save the 50,000 gallon Comeford Park water tower, first filled in 1921, donating $50,000 in 2002 toward making the tower seismically stable.

Tips for Your Visit

• The museum lot has 38 standard and 2 accessible parking spaces, with more parking at Jennings Memorial Park.
• Visiting in summer? The restored 1884 Gehl Home in Jennings Memorial Park opens seasonally from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and the Society offers tours by reservation.
• Bring a question. The Society’s volunteer historians take research requests about a person, home, business, event or photograph, and you can start one through the website.
• Make a day of it. The Hibulb Cultural Center, where the Tulalip Tribes tell their own history, is on the Tulalip Reservation just west of I-5, and on summer Wednesdays the Marysville Farmers Market sets up at 501 Delta Avenue.

The museum keeps limited weekly hours, so check the website before you go.

Plan Your Visit

Address: 6805 Armar Road, Marysville, WA 98270
Phone: 360.659.3090
Website: marysvillehistory.org
Hours and admission: Check the museum website for current days, hours, and admission before you visit.
Directions: View on Google Maps