More than 1,100 photographs depicting Eau Claire and the surrounding area are now available online from the Chippewa Valley Museum archives. The Museum has partnered with the L. E. Phillips Memorial Public Library in Eau Claire to provide access to this wide-ranging collection, which offers a look at businesses, industry, recreation, and daily life in northwest Wisconsin in the 19th and 20th centuries. The digital collection is organized into thirteen browsable subject categories, including “All About Music,” “Downtown Eau Claire,” and “Summer Sports and Recreation.”
Eau Claire’s longstanding ties to professional baseball are documented in team portraits of the Eau Claire Bears (1937-1942; 1946-1953), later known as the Eau Claire Braves (1954-1962), a minor-league team affiliated with the Chicago Cubs and, later, the Boston Braves. Baseball legend Hank Aaron played his first season of professional baseball with the Eau Claire Bears in 1952. The history of baseball in Eau Claire has been documented by students in the Public History program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire,  who conducted oral history interviews with Eau Claire residents involved in the local baseball scene in the 1940s and 50s.
The Eau Claire Bears played in Carson Park, which still hosts baseball games and has also been the home of the Chippewa Valley Museum since 1974. The park itself, situated on a peninsula extending into the dramatic oxbow of Half Moon Lake, is well represented in the digital collection through photographs of the grounds, beaches, sporting events, picnics, and aerial views of the distinctive landscape.
The Chippewa Valley Museum and L. E. Phillips Library developed this digital collection in collaboration with the ResCarta Foundation of La Crosse. The Museum worked with volunteers to scan the original photographs, and a small start-up grant from the Eau Claire Historic Preservation Foundation helped to get the digitization program off the ground. A large group of photographs related to logging and lumbering in the Eau Claire area will soon be added to the digital collection.
Browse and search the Eau Claire Area Historical Photographs collection.
See more historical materials digitized by the L. E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, including city directories and Eau Claire high school yearbooks.
