More Info
Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday except during holidays. People need to call ahead at 706-861-2860 to book group tours. To learn more, visit 6thcavalrymuseum.org.
Chris McKeever, 6th Cavalry Museum executive director, invites the public to check out the newly renovated ADA-accessible Fort Oglethorpe museum.
The majority of the painting was done free of charge by Kyle Russell, she said, though Walker County work detail painted the upstairs Community Room.
The rest of the renovations were paid for through $750,000 earmarked for historic preservation in the 2008 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, she said. McKeever said the money was originally set aside because the county wanted to purchase a historic home across from Ringgold City Hall called the Whitman House, but that fell through.
” District 1 Commissioner Ken Marks at that time recommended that each member of the County Commission receive $150,000 to do a historic preservation project in their district,” she said. “He worked with City Manager Ron Goulart. The request to me was if the 6th Cavalry Museum were allowed $150,000 of the SPLOST funding how the money would benefit the museum to further telling our history. My response was that the museum is prevented from bringing school groups through our building because of ADA compliance.”
She requested a wheelchair lift connecting the first floor to the second, and three ADA-compliant restrooms plus a catering kitchen.
“We used the grant money on installing the lift and we had to lay water lines and plumb the upstairs bathroom and catering kitchen,” said McKeever. “Before, we did not have water in the back. So if you catered a lunch upstairs you ran up and down the stairs to get water, and it’s a long walk.
“SPLOST funding came back at 80 percent of what they thought it would be. We ended up with $116,000 for this project.”
Other local historical improvement projects were also funded with the money, she said.
“The Old Stone Church improvements and the addition of the playground, the Veteran’s Memorial at the Colonnade and the restrooms and trails installation at the Cleburne Statue were all part of the historic preservation funding too,” McKeever said. “We are the last one to get funded.”
Barnhardt Circle – where the 6th Cavalry Museum is located – is on the National Register of Historic Places for the military action it saw dating back to the World War I.
The museum opened 34 years ago. In the 1980s and 1990s, World War II veterans volunteered there and sold coffee mugs, key chains and other souvenirs to raise money for the museum, McKeever said. In the 1990s, a $10,000 state of Georgia grant funded the building of the second floor addition.
When McKeever was hired in 2005, she began applying for grants to fund museum improvements and programs, she said.
Email Katie Ward at kward@timesfreepress.com.