A Grant, a Centennial, and Zero Oral History Experience

Illinois State Museum holds 12 million objects and is coming up on its own 150th anniversary next year. Erika Holst curates its history collection; Amanda Bryden is registrar. Neither had ever run an oral history project. "Oral historian is not in either of our job descriptions," Holst says. So when talk turned to marking the 2026 centennial of Route 66, the 2,500-mile federal highway that once ran from Chicago to LA, the museum's first idea was smaller: use TheirStory to record donors explaining how objects came into the collection. That idea snowballed into a full oral history initiative, funded by an $8,000 National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Grant. The number that stuck was 100. Holst and Bryden lobbied for something rounder and smaller, 66, but were overruled. Over roughly a year, from March 2024 to spring 2025, on top of their existing jobs, they had 100 people to find and record.

A Grant, a Centennial, and Zero Oral History Experience

Illinois State Museum holds 12 million objects and is coming up on its own 150th anniversary next year. Erika Holst curates its history collection; Amanda Bryden is registrar. Neither had ever run an oral history project. "Oral historian is not in either of our job descriptions," Holst says. So when talk turned to marking the 2026 centennial of Route 66, the 2,500-mile federal highway that once ran from Chicago to LA, the museum's first idea was smaller: use TheirStory to record donors explaining how objects came into the collection. That idea snowballed into a full oral history initiative, funded by an $8,000 National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Grant. The number that stuck was 100. Holst and Bryden lobbied for something rounder and smaller, 66, but were overruled. Over roughly a year, from March 2024 to spring 2025, on top of their existing jobs, they had 100 people to find and record.

Finding the Voices Along 300 Miles of Highway

Judy Wagenblast, hired through the museum's foundation for her deep ties in the community, found the project's first 20 to 25 narrators. Holst and Bryden assumed at least half the interviews could happen remotely, sending people a link with prompt questions to record on their own schedule. That worked exactly twice, both times with narrators in Europe. Route 66 was decommissioned in Illinois in 1977, so most people with firsthand memories were in their 70s, 80s, and beyond, and had little interest in a self-service recording link. Holst and Bryden went to them instead, meeting at libraries, kitchen tables, and living rooms, carrying only a laptop, an external microphone, and a WiFi hotspot for rural stops without reliable internet. They found the rest of their narrators however they could: referrals, historical societies up and down the route, targeted searches for specific professions (Bryden wanted a state trooper, and found one, plus his daughter), and Route 66 memory groups on Facebook that Holst combed for people to message directly. The interviews surfaced themes the museum hadn't planned for, including the discrimination Black travelers faced and the resilience of parents who packed food and chose routes carefully so their kids could have an ordinary, joyful road trip.

From 75 Hours of Tape to a Springfield Exhibit

By the end, Holst and Bryden had 75 hours of material. Sitting with all of it, they decided to build an exhibit, not just an archive. They combed the interviews for the moments that "grabbed" them, then grouped the highlights into four sections: traveling, working, eating, and staying. A colleague built a touchscreen where visitors could listen to selected clips, and the two women shopped to match physical objects to specific memories: one man's story about tailgate lunches with a Scotch cooler sent them to eBay for the exact model, and another's memory of "shoebox chicken," a homemade road meal packed in a foil-lined shoebox because families couldn't afford diners, sent them to a display-food supplier for realistic props.

None of it would have fit their timeline without TheirStory's automatic transcription, which Holst calls "the game changer" and "what made this entire thing possible," since neither of them had time to transcribe 75 hours by hand. An intern, and later a colleague from the museum's foundation, used those transcripts and TheirStory's auto-generated indexing to proof the material and prepare it for the museum's public, searchable online archive, freeing Holst and Bryden to keep recording.

The exhibit, running in Springfield through next April, has drawn family members hearing relatives' stories for the first time, a PBS crew filming for a segment, and scholars requesting quotes for books. Several narrators have since died, and their families, Holst says, are "deeply, deeply touched" the recordings exist. Looking back, both women wish they'd built a public talk about the project first; the talks they've since given have drawn more people with Route 66 memories to interview. "I would say just start it and let it work itself out," Holst says. "Don't be daunted by the process."

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