In 2000, Donna Blair, Louis Goulat Swenson, and Russ Hansno met at Louise’s home starting this group. We were bothered that the Town of Sterling had just burned down the 1888 town hall building. We agreed that our goal would be to work together to preserve local history, by being a group that advised the community about what was historic and should be preserved if at all possible. We began to have meetings regularly at Louise’s house. Alice Swenson, Allan Swenson, Linda Harris, Ione Christenson, and others came as we met to discuss items of local interest. Soon we realized that more people were interested than we had room for in Louise’s living room, and so moved to the Cushing Community Center. Betty and Sherman Jensen came to the meetings and advised us to form an official historical society, with bylaws and officers and organize as a sub-chapter of the Polk County Historical Society. Betty and Sherman had helped found and shepherd the St. Croix Falls HS through the same process and made it all easy for us to accomplish. Moving into our 12th year, we have moved in directions we hadn’t planned, but welcomed. Folks kept offering us items of local history—old record books and artifacts. With a great deal of help from Betty Wilson, an early member, we soon were able to use a room in the upstairs of the Cushing Community Center (the 1956 school building) and turn it into what we called our “Memory Room.”