Oswego museum’s photo collection shows local residents have enjoyed and coped with winter here for a long time

No matter when you were born in, you know winter can be a serious drag.

It’s long. It gets real cold. It snows, sometimes very heavily. Then you have to scrape the ice and snow off your car windshield in that snow and you have to avoid slipping and breaking something on the ice whenever you’re out and about. And all that is just for starters.

Oswego and Kendall County area residents have been dealing with winter and mostly making the best of it here for nearly 200 years, according to photographic evidence on file at the Little White School Museum at Jackson and Polk streets near the village’s downtown.

Over the past several decades, the museum has amassed a large collection of historic local winter photos that show everything from students in local schools celebrating Christmas in their classrooms and building snow forts on school grounds to kids and adults lacing up their skates for a fun afternoon of ice skating on the Fox River.

The photo collection, however, also has evidence of local residents coping with winter conditions the best they could. There are photos of trolleys traveling along just plowed tracks just outside of village limits, other trolleys stuck in heavy snow.

Another photos show a lone pedestrian crossing Washington Street at Main Street bracing against a cold, winter wind and falling snow.

Yet another photo shows a frail looking Model T Ford parked along Main Street just south of Washington Street after a snow.

Built as a Methodist-Episcopal Church in 1850 and then converted to public school classroom space for 50 years before being restored and turned into a community museum, the Little White School is a joint project of the non-profit Oswegoland Heritage Association and the Oswegoland Park District.

For more information, call the museum at 630-554-2999, send an email to info@littlewhiteschoolmuseum.org, or visit littlewhiteschoolmuseum.org.