2023 Spring Newsletter - Laserfiche WebLink

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CELEBRATING THE HUGO HISTORICAL COMMISSION 9 Join us in celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the creation of the Hugo Historical Commission! The commission was created when the City Council voted in favor of its establishment on December 16, 2002, charged with preserving and protecting the history of Hugo. The mission of the Hugo Historical Commission is to connect our community to its past by: • Locating, collecting, and preserving historical information about our community. • Educating the community, encouraging personal and community responsibility for preserving our past, and fostering an un- derstanding and appreciation of our history. The Hugo Historical Commission has worked on several projects that have greatly enhanced the collective understanding of community history, and preserving it for generations to come. A notable recent accomplishment was the Hugo Namesake Project, which sought to answer the age- old question; was Hugo named for Duluth Mayor and Marine Engineer Trevanion Hugo, or French writer of Les Misérables fame Victor Hugo? A few other research projects the Historical Commission completed detailed Eugene Peltier the Village Blacksmith, the dev- astation of the Polio Epidemic, and the history of railroad transportation in Hugo. All of these projects, and the fascinating stories that come with them, are available for the public on the city website. The work of the Hugo Historical Commission has had an incredible impact on our collec- tive understanding of the community’s past, present, and future, and would not have been possible without the hard work of the Commission’s volunteers for the past two decades. We would like to give special recognition to Cynthia Schoonover, who has been a member of the Hugo Historical Commission since its founding in 2002. Cynthia has chaired the Hugo Historical Commission since 2015, and has been an instrumental force in keeping Hugo’s history alive. Please join us in thanking Cynthia for her decades of service! The Hugo Historical Commission has been very involved with an on- going project led by local community members to save and restore the Hop- kins Schoolhouse. The schoolhouse was constructed in 1928 near the inter- section of 170th St N and Highway 61, and served as an “ungraded elemen- tary school.” After its use as a school, the building saw service as the town hall for Oneka Township until 1972, when the township incorporated with the Village of Hugo forming the City of Hugo. Although the schoolhouse saw brief use as a youth meeting cen- ter, the building has remained vacant since the early 2000s. In 2022, a group of volunteers formed a steering committee to create a nonprofit organization to be known as the Hopkins Schoolhouse & Heritage Center, envisioning the space as a museum of Hugo history and community gathering place. The City Council approved a request from the steering committee to not remove the schoolhouse, to enter an agreement with the Forest Lake Area Historical Society as the temporary fiscal host for the project, and to transition the agree- ment to the new non-profit organiza- tion once formed. Since the approval, City staff has been working with the steering committee on details for this agreement, which will be reviewed at a later date by the City Council. Mean- while, the steering committee is work- ing on a capital campaign and other plans to secure funding. For more information or to inquire about ways to support the Hopkins Schoolhouse & Heritage Center, visit hopkinsschoolhouse.org or on Facebook. Hugo HIstorical Commission Cynthia Schoonover, HIstorical Commission