In 1943 dedicated volunteers formed the Geneva Historical Society to preserve local history and educate residents. Their dream came true in 1964, when bequests and other community gifts built the Geneva Historical Museum in Wheeler Park.

Today Geneva newcomers outnumber old timers. To serve this increasingly diverse community the Historical Society reinvented itself as the Geneva History Center as a first step toward fulfilling its mission.

The next step was to replace the Wheeler Park museum with a more adequately sized and more centrally located facility.

After more than a ten-year process, that dream become a reality in 2004. The Geneva History Center, located in the heart of Geneva's downtown district on historic Third Street, is nearly three times the size of the old facility and includes two exhibition galleries, a large meeting room archival reading room, as well as collections storage and offices. These state-of-the-art facilities combined with multiple-award winning exhibits, educational programs, cutting- edge research and dedicated volunteers make the Geneva History Center a source of great community pride.

That community pride is demonstrated in the fact that the Geneva History Center operates on voluntary private donations and does not receive public monies for operations as do so many other local history museums.