A safe and secure room named after community historian Yvonne Moen is gradually being filled with artifacts to preserve them.
Located at the Heritage Park Museum, a converted shipping container contains papers, documents, photos and textiles at risk of damage.
"We knew that we needed a new temperature-controlled artifact room to improve our archival capability, but we decided that waiting for an entire new building to be planned, approved and constructed would take longer than we were willing to wait and would leave our collections at risk of continued deterioration," said assistant curator Eric Johnson.
Up until now, documents and other artifacts were stored at the museum's signature Kalum Lake Hotel building.
An original $34,750 budget for the Yvonne Moen Archives Room was reduced to $26,000 by purchasing a used shipping container already insulated and suitable for the museum's needs.
A $5,000 donation from the Terrace Community Foundation, $500 from the Terrace Regional Historical Society and a heat pump with installation by Aqua Plumbing and Heating helped ease the impact on the museum's budget.
A co-author of several books about Terrace and a firm promoter of preserving the area's past, Moen passed away in 2023.