SALEM (WSLS 10) - Photos taken during the Great Depression for the Roanoke County Sheriff's Office have been added to the list of Virginia's Top Ten Endangered Artifacts.
For the fourth year, the Salem Museum is participating in the program from the Virginia Association of Museums. The collection of photos taken between 1937 and 1943 was nominated this year for the increasingly popular statewide poll, being voted on through August 23.
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The photos recorded crime investigations of the day, including numerous shots of fingerprints, crime scenes, and photos of evidence like jimmied windows or broken cash registers. Also, local imagery like a gas station after a fire, traffic accidents, or Salem street scenes during a flood and a blizzard.
Some photos of great historical interest are 1941 head shots of members of the local Virginia Protective Force, a pre-WWII equivalent of the National Guard. Also, photos of a local women's baseball team and a WWII propaganda display—a coffin reading "Rest in Peace Hitler"— have also been found.
Salem's Museum Director said the collection has been somewhat stabilized with archival, acid-free enclosures, but many of the original negatives and photos require conservation. Some negatives are brittle, some photos faded, and there is little organization of the hundreds of envelopes. The director said the collection would greatly benefit from a digitization effort.
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Part of the collection will be on public display for the duration of the voting, with a convenient computer station set up for visitors to vote immediately.
To vote for the photo collection from the Salem Museum and see the other nominees, visit www.vatop10artifacts.org from August 1 to August 23.