Excitement abounds in Corte Madera as we anticipate the opening of our beautiful new Town Hall. Thanks to the efforts of the Corte Madera Community Foundation, the building will include our new Corte Madera Heritage and History Archives, a treasure trove of materials about the delightful history of our town which will be accessible to the public both in-person and online.
The story of the Town’s archive project began in 1976, when Corte Madera resident Gerrie Reichard organized a group of local volunteers eager to know more about our town’s early years. Their enthusiasm soon led them to establish the Corte Madera Heritage & History Group as a nonprofit organization.
During the next 17 years, Gerrie personally contacted dozens of longtime Corte Madera residents who gladly shared their photo albums with her and participated in a series of oral history interviews. Gerrie continued to catalog and preserve historic photographs and other information about the Town drawn from a wide range of sources until her death in 1995.
In 2002, Jana Haehl, our own unofficial Town Historian, compiled and edited “A History of Corte Madera,” published by the Corte Madera Community Foundation. Jana’s book features many of Gerrie’s photographs and stories.
Following the death of Ken Reichard in 2005, the Reichard family asked Jana to take custody of the extensive materials in the Corte Madera Heritage & History archives, knowing that she would preserve these artifacts for the benefit of the community. Jana accepted custody of boxes and boxes of archival materials, and she then arranged for the Corte Madera Community Foundation to become the legal steward of the archives as part of our mission to preserve local history.
Several years ago we began searching for the best way to ensure that the collection of local history material we received from the Corte Madera Heritage & History Group is permanently preserved as well as publicly accessible.
After storing the collection securely, we scanned hundreds of photographs and printed documents to go into an easily searchable archival database that enables anyone with online access to learn more about our Town and its rich history.
With technical help from Lucidea/Presto, a knowledge management software company, the initial phase of our Corte Madera Heritage & History archival website is now accessible online.
This website offers secure online access to hundreds of archival photographs, clippings, articles, memoirs, oral history interviews, maps, and links to other data related to Corte Madera. Future additions of searchable content will expand the scope of the archival library as we do more scanning and import it into the system.