Video interview with Alan Olson, director of exhibits for the Dallas Historical Society

by Mike Bullock , John P. Meyer

Insider look at the holdings of the Dallas Historical Society

Exhibits director Al Olson gives Pegasus News film crew an up-close-and-personal look at artifacts and historical documents which would normally be housed at the Hall of State.

(Click photo to see entire gallery)

A pistol (stamped "Deringer") owned by Davy Crockett

Last Wednesday (Aug. 19), Mike Bullock and I were privileged to receive a first-person tour of the collections of the Dallas Historical Society (DHS), courtesy of DHS Director of Collections Alan Olson.

The bulk of the DHS holdings are currently removed from their normal repository (at the Hall of State in Fair Park) to facilitate renovations there -- hopefully finished in time for the kickoff of this year's State Fair of Texas. The warehouse that houses these three million some-odd items is in an industrial pocket of far North Dallas that is mighty hard to find, as Mike and I discovered when we attempted to navigate there using Google Maps.

(Turns out the City of Garland has an identically-named street only a dozen or so blocks away. Which we successfully located, and then drove up and down aimlessly. Mike finally called Al, which led us to determine that we were indeed in the wrong city.)

Regardless, once we found the correct location, we were flabbergasted at the marvelousness of the artifacts, documents, maps, and items of all sorts to be found in the DHS collections.

The Society has been around since 1922, and in that span of time the organization has succeeded in acquiring an astonishing array of items of all sorts related to the City of Dallas, its environs, and the State of Texas. In fact, a look at the rows of boxes stored in the off-site warehouse is more than vaguely reminiscent of the ending scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. So we decided to position Al in front of one of the long rows of artifacts for our interview. (To emphasize the effect.)