Collaboratively telling the history of the land, its people, cultures, and their interactions over time – bringing understanding to how the cultural heritage shapes, inspires and informs Cook County.

In 2023, Cook Historic Cook County joined with three other historical societies in Cook County to form the Cook County Historical Alliance.

The Schroeder Area, Tofte, Gunflint Trail, and Cook County historical societies have partnered to learn how to work more effectively together. These partner organizations utilized funding from the Minnesota Historical Society Heritage Partnership Program.

2022-23 UPDATE on the Cook County Historical Societies Alliance Study

The Cook County historical societies of Schroeder, Tofte, Gunflint Trail, and Grand Marais have partnered to work on collaboration and to explore options for continued success in our respective areas of responsibility.

Since beginning this endeavor, we have chosen Superior Design + Planning to facilitate the study.  With their guidance, we have completed Phase I: we established a mutual understanding and chose a “consensus decision-making process” by which we conduct our meetings. This process helped us to agree upon our core vision and values.

In Phase II, each organization shared planning documents and financial information - as well as documents detailing our culture, programming, and programs.  From this collection, a Findings Report was created from which we could better understand the collaborative partnership options and possible benefits.

We are presently entering Phase III where we will discuss and finalize scenarios with the goal of forming a continuum of options and decision criteria. From here, we will progress to scenario selection, as well as any needed operational and implementation planning.

This process and opportunity is so timely for all of us.  We all recognize and acknowledge the responsibility of each of our organizations to preserve history – inclusive of all peoples, cultures, and time periods - for future generations.