La Habra Historical Museum celebrates new chapter with new home

A revamped La Habra Historical Museum celebrates its grand opening this week, offering a central location to showcase more than 100 years of community history.

Established in 1898 by the La Habra Old Settlers Historical Society, the museum previously existed as a collection of archives housed throughout the city, before its first permanent building opened in 2010 along La Habra Boulevard, directly east of City Hall and just behind the La Habra Library. After closing during the COVID-19 pandemic, the La Habra Historical Museum has relocated to this new facility at 211 S. Euclid St.

The facility change is just one of several efforts to renew interest in the city’s history, museum leaders said, especially as La Habra continues to celebrate its 100th anniversary of incorporation as a city.

“We’ve expanded our scope so much,” Historical Society President Roy Ramsland said. “It’s just my desire to share the information with as many people as possible.”

The museum currently features a wide variety of exhibits, including a timeline of the city’s settlement, a section exploring the birth of the Hass avocado and a robust display commemorating the La Habra Corn Festival, which celebrates its 77th anniversary with this weekend’s event.

On one wall, photos depict women sorting oranges at the Sunkist Packing House, which transformed the city into a key hub of California’s citrus industry. Across on another wall, portraits of notable La Habra settlers detail each individual’s role in founding the city.

Efforts to revamp the museum began in 2022. Ramsland said he and his fellow board members wanted to approach the project in a way that would make the city’s history more widely accessible, while taking advantage of modern technology.

“Our goal is to ultimately get all of (the archives) posted onto our website, so everybody has access to the data and the information, even if they can’t physically come here,” Ramsland said.

Ramsland said he enlisted the help of board member Kandace Gutierrez, who has been managing the museum’s online presence and helping digitize the society’s historical archives.

For Gutierrez, a 30-year resident of La Habra, the new museum marks an important step toward making local history more visible. At its new location, she said the museum will help visitors to “really immerse themselves in La Habra history.”

While working on a personal research project, Gutierrez uncovered an audio recording of her great, great, great grandmother  — a special experience she said inspired her to contribute to the museum’s mission of bringing other community stories to life.

“I’m hoping I can provide that same feeling I felt when I listened to my great, great, great grandmother to somebody else,” Gutierrez said.

The museum also features a life-size recreation of the Mills grocery store, formerly located on the north side of Central Avenue. The store — one of the city’s first — was opened in 1907 by the great-grandfather of Kent Roberts, who attended the grand opening and worked with the Historical Society to accurately capture the scene. Roberts said he is happy to see the livelihoods of his ancestors represented in the museum.

The museum’s principal designer, Jack Hale, said he worked alongside curators at Contrast Media Agency, who helped construct the museum’s exhibits, to capture Mills grocery store and other historical scenes with utmost attention to detail and accuracy.

“We started with an empty room and a bunch of objects,” Hale said, “and figured out how it would tell a cohesive story of the history of La Habra.”

The museum will be open from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. Admission is free.