In 1952 the Duke Hunt Museum was conceived after a meeting of the council of the municipality of Paipoonge. The story I was told was that a pioneer couple had passed away and there was no place to put the items they left behind with no family members to receive them. After some discussion at the council meeting about the dispersal of the contents of the farm two of the council members Herb Gammond and Archie Hanna continued the discussion on the way home and came up with the idea of opening a Museum to house all those special artefacts that tell the story of our beginnings in the area.

H.K. (Duke) Hunt was the son of the first settlers in the area and had collected a large number of artefacts himself an so he was approached by council to set up a municipal Museum.

The first Museum was set up in the basement of the slate river School with many local students supplying help to bring it to completion. It remained there for many years until the School needed the space being used by the Museum and it was then moved to a new building provided by the municipality just behind the municipal office on Hwy 130 located behind what is now Rosslyn clinic building. It began wit just very small building but over the years more extensions were added as the collection grew and finally it was a building 180 feet in length. It remained open until the municipality acquired ownership of the Rosslyn Village School. The Museum needed more room and so it was decided to move the contents of the Duke Hut Museum to the Rosslyn Village School. This was done in 2009 with many volunteers coming forth to pack and move the entire contents of the Museum to the School. The Duke Hunt Museum re-opened in 2010 in its new home and was well received by everyone. During that period the municipality was gifted a wonderful automotive collection which required a building to house and so began the search for a place to house it which would take many years to complete. In 2012 the municipality was presented with an opportunity to obtain Founders’ Museum and Pioneer Village on Highway 61 and after completing the deal it reopened with the staff from the Duke Hunt Museum opening the Founders site and keeping both venues open for 4 years. During that time it was becoming difficult to maintain both places with time and effort, and funding. So a decision was made to build a new building on the Founders site to house the new auto collection and at the same time it was decided o move the Duke Hunt Museum to the Founders site using the historic Slate River Hall as a new site for an all new Duke Hunt Museum keeping the artefacts from that Museum separate from the Founders’ collection

  • Lois Garrity

*The Duke Hunt Museum operated under the name Oliver Paipoonge Museum for a number of years