Photo | Aspen Historical Society

Aspen Historical Society Collections

Collecting Area History

Where can you find a phone book from the 1920s, Aspen Mountain’s first “boat tow” ski lift, and perhaps a photo of yourself living it up in Aspen in the 1970s—all in one place? Aspen Historical Society (AHS) Collection, of course!

AHS Collection, containing nearly 90,000 items, is one of the largest repositories in the region, and growing daily with images, documents, moving footage, and three-dimensional artifacts. It is AHS’s mission to provide convenient access and research support as a public resource.

Want To Donate To Our Collection?

AHS maintains collections for preservation, exhibition, education, and research. For more information about donating to the collection, please Contact our Curator to determine if your items meet our collection criteria at 970.925.3721 x110 or email curator@aspenhistory.org.

  • Donors will be required fill out and sign a Deed of Gift transferring legal ownership of the collection to AHS.
  • AHS reserves the right to decline or remove submissions of duplicative, inappropriate, or irrelevant nature and is not obligated to preserve all donated content in perpetuity.
Donation Information Sheet

What Do We Collect?

Photography

  • Slide transparencies, photographic prints, born digital image, digital only images, lantern slides, and film, glass plate negatives, photo albums, and more.

Objects

  • all types of three dimensional items pertaining to local historical periods including mining, ranching, and skiing equipment, textiles, household accessories, and furniture, etc.

Library

  • Published books, yearbooks, city directories, telephone books, etc.

Archival Materials

  • All types of written material including published items such as programs, brochures, schedules, posters, maps, newspapers, periodicals, etc. as well as manuscripts, theses, scrapbooks, diaries, correspondence, annual reports, transcripts, etc.

Audio and Video

  • Moving footage including 16mm film, 8 mm film, DVDs, digital formats, and video tape in all formats.
  • Audio collections contains cassette tapes, CDs, and digital formats.