Wood River Museum of History and Culture
580 Fourth Street East, Suite 130, Ketchum, Idaho 83340
Entry to the Museum is FREE.
Open: Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
208-726-8118 | Email us here.
How in the World Did You Get to Sun Valley?
This award-winning exhibit tells the story of Central Idaho through individuals who found their way to this hard-to-get-to-place.
More here about these stories.
Exhibits and Galleries
All the exhibits at the Wood River Museum include interactive elements, where visitors are encouraged to write, type, talk, and remember – because we all are part of history! For example, in the Hemingway exhibit, individuals can sit at a typewriter like the one that Hemingway used and try typing their own true sentences. The Museum also includes a small gift shop with unique gifts that relate to the exhibits and regional history.
Shoshone-Bannock Homelands
The Tribal Room honors the history and present-day of the Shoshone and Bannock Tribes, which have inhabited the lands of Central Idaho since time immemorial.
Words in War:
Readers, Writers, and WWII
Ernest Hemingway was a world famous writer. Ray Trautman was a behind-the-scenes librarian. Both believed fervently in the power of the written word. Their stories illustrate the importance of writing and reading during World War II, as spectacles of book burnings in Germany and Victory Book Campaigns in the United States were broadcast around the world.
In 1940, Ray Trautman became Chief Librarian of the U.S. Army. From this post, Trautman invented the Armed Services Editions – miniature books, magazines, and comics – so soldiers would always have stories nearby. Whenever they had a spare moment, troops read to escape the war, learn, find hope, and remember home. More here.
How in the World
Did You Get to Sun Valley?
This exhibit explores the many reasons and ways that people have come to this hard-to-reach area over time. It is not easy to find Sun Valley and Central Idaho in general, here in the high desert mountains of the American West, but a wide range of people have done so. Luggage tags are provided for visitors to share their unique story of how in the world they got to Sun Valley. More here.
Cabinet of Wonders
The Cabinet of Wonders invites visitors to discover history by opening the doors and drawers of a fanciful cabinet that holds a great variety of regional history artifacts – including an antique phonograph (c. 1900) accompanied with an Irving Berlin tune (shown above), a working telegraph key, vintage skis, historical documents, sheep shears, and much more.
Portrait of a Mountain
Over the past 150 years, the greater Ketchum and Sun Valley area has taken shape around, and been shaped by, the iconic Bald Mountain. This exhibit looks deeply at the mountain that defines the local landscape and affects life and imaginations here in so many ways. An authentic chair from one of Baldy’s first chairlifts provides photo ops for visitors to memorialize their trip to the Museum … and to the iconic mountain.
New Exhibit: Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame
“The Perfect Place”
A Home for the All-New Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame Immersive Exhibit
December 2026: An all-new, immersive experience of the Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame! The Community Library’s Wood River Museum of History + Culture is creating an interactive exhibit to be installed in the alley between the Gold Mine Thrift and Consign stores on Walnut Avenue in Ketchum. More here.
Hall of Fame Inductees
The Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame honors those whose achievements in sport or business has been matched or even exceeded by their contributions to this community.
Learn more here about the Sun Valley Winter Sports Hall of Fame inductees.
Pop-up Exhibits
Veterans Wall of Honor
Annually in November
Wood River Museum
The Wood River Museum presents a Wall of Honor for United States Veterans to recognize those who served and sacrificed for our country, our freedom, our liberty.
Everyone in the community is invited to participate by filling out a page with a veteran that he/she/they knew—oneself, a family member, friend, neighbor, etc., living or deceased.
Only What We Could Carry
February 13-24, 2024
Wood River Museum
from Seattle in 1942
This exhibit honors of the annual Day of Remembrance, which commemorates the signing of Executive Order 9066 that led to the exclusion, forced removal, and unjust incarceration of over 125,000 Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
The interactive exhibit features four suitcases, three of which include items that prisoners might have taken with them—from clothing to canned goods. The fourth suitcase invites you to consider what items you might take, should you be forcibly removed from your home and taken to what the National Park Service terms, “an American Concentration Camp.”
Community Library Foyer Exhibit
The Art of Correspondence
July – December 2026: Handwritten letters have connected people for centuries. The letters in this exhibit are among many held in the archive of the Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History at The Community Library. They show how personal correspondence can carry declarations of love, offerings of comfort, news of triumph and loss, as well as the ordinary details of daily events that compose our lives. More here.
Past Exhibits
A Note from the Executive Director
The richness and resilience of a community depends on its capacity to tend and tell its many stories. That is the goal of The Community Library, and that is the goal of the Wood River Museum of History and Culture. Ten years ago, the Library became the custodian of the Ketchum and Sun Valley Ski and Heritage Museum, because it aligned with the work of the Library’s Center for Regional History, and because the Library offered a solid foundation for ongoing historic preservation and exhibition. Now the Library is amplifying that work, presenting the Museum in a new location with new infrastructure and a new name. The message is: History matters here; it is nuanced and ongoing; and we all are part of it.
~ Jenny Emery Davidson
