Refurbished in 2001, the Hall of History documents the immigration of the Swiss to New Glarus and their efforts to keep alive Old World traditions while becoming part of America. Cherished heirlooms of early settlers and photos of village life help tell their story from 1845 through the 21st Century.

This beautiful one-room cabin was built by pioneers in the 1850s. Found inside a farm home that was being torn down, it was moved to the museum in 1974.

The Bee House offers a look at a particularly Swiss approach to beekeeping, with the hives and the processing plant in one location. If you have allergies, don't worry. No bees are in the hives.

Small factories began replacing the home production of cheese after the Civil War. Our display shows how cheese was made on equipment that was in use around 1900. Every October master cheesemakers use these historic tools to demonstrate the cheesemaking process.

A rural one-room school, built in the 1870s, serves as the focus of a display on old-time education and schooling in the Swiss colony. Special learning opportunities are available for students and teachers -- contact us for more information..

The tools of village blacksmiths and carpenters are laid out and ready for another day's work, but all is quiet here as you view the many antique tools so essential to pioneer life in a community geared to farming and hand labor.

The butcher was an important member of any community, and the Swiss relied on him to make special sausages such as landjaeger and kalberwurst.

Long ago the New Glarus region shifted from wheat production to dairy farming and here you will see a collection of farm tools and machinery used in production and harvesting grain, hay and corn.

The New Glarus Fire Department owns and maintains the equipment displayed here, including an unusual 1902 ladder rig and hose cart that were pulled by a running team of volunteers. Today the equipment is often used for demonstrations in parades.

This 1880s building houses shelf after shelf of collectible items from needlework to dishes to cowbells and other unusual artifacts from years gone by in New Glarus. Mundane tools and unusual artifacts from the past are all on display.

The entire print shop that produce the local weekly newspaper from 1897 to 1967 is now housed in our museum - California job cases, a flatbed press, a Linotype are all just as they were years ago.

This replica of the Swiss Colony's original 20' x 30' log church is used every August for a church service celebrating the founding of New Glarus. Its contents include two benches and the first communion service from the original building.

Outside are gravestones of some of the colony's pioneers. The stones, most in excellent condition, were removed from the pioneer cemetery when a settler's monument was erected in 1915. This is a most unusual collection for a museum.