History of Gilboa Historical Society

Background

Three historic events were seminal in the creation of the Gilboa Historical Society:

1. The construction of the Gilboa Dam in the 1920s removed the center of our town, and a “New Gilboa” (or Imerville) took its place in the second half of that decade, however, that hamlet had been razed by fire, the Post Office relocated to Conesville Road near the Gilboa town line, and the town hall moved to a one-room school house on Stryker Road just west of the creek. There was to be no center to the town for the next 60+ years.
2. The flood of 1996 threatened the United Methodist church and the town hall, and FEMA’s property acquisition process took over. The buildings were to be moved to a new elevation or destroyed. The town opted to move these two buildings.
3. By the late 1990s, the town of Gilboa was nearing its 150th birthday. A group of residents were of a mind to create historical society, and its first meeting was on the third Wednesday, June 1997.

Preview of our history

In our first decade, we acquired a decommissioned town hall to use as a fossil museum, and our collection included Gilboa fossils, artifacts, and photos of the village.

The second decade saw our society really bloom with outbuildings for farm equipment, a museum addition doubling our display space, and an expansion of our charter to fully include our cultural as well as our natural history.

Now, starting our third decade, we have added a community room and a large covered pavilion for outdoor events, and have grown to be a full-blown repository of rural history in upstate New York and a tourist attraction for southern Schoharie, western Greene, and northeast Delaware counties.

Resources you can find in the Gilboa Museum and Juried History Center

• • Permanent and rotating displays of the Gilboa Fossils, Gilboa Village, and the Gilboa Reservoir;
  • rotating displays on neighborhoods and lifestyles,
  • seasonal display(s),
  • a new Help Desk and on-demand special tours;
  • View of the Gift Shop.