WILLOW CREEK — The Carnegie Library’s local history room, once a quiet corner where elderly residents thumbed through yellowed newspapers, has become an unlikely tourism attraction, logging 680 visits in 2022 — a 200% increase over 2019 and the highest traffic in the room’s four decades of operation.
Library director Doris Kim attributes the surge to three converging trends: a post-pandemic spike in genealogy interest, the town’s growing tourism profile, and the digitization of 12,000 historical records including marriage licenses, land deeds, and mill employment ledgers.
“We’ve had visitors from 22 states come through this room in the past year,” Kim said. “They’re not just passersby. These are people who had grandparents born here or great-grandparents who worked at the mill and they want to walk where their family walked.”
The digital collection, funded by a $36,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, allows visitors to search records on two dedicated computer workstations. Kim said she spends an average of four hours per week assisting out-of-town researchers via email.
Maeve O’Donnell of the General Store has noticed the trend. “Visitors come in for a snack and tell us about their great-grandfather who was a logger or a storekeeper here. It’s a connection that’s emotional, not just commercial.”
The library is launching a “Know Your Roots” weekend program in June, offering guided walking tours of historic downtown sites and a workshop on Maine genealogy research methods. Registration has already reached capacity at 30 participants.