The Fountain Inn Museum has a new managing director. Chloe Zivitski began her duties December 1, 2022, taking charge of the Museum’s daily activities and general management.

Museum president Peggy Nickson said, “We are extremely fortunate to have Chloe on board. In addition to being a hometown girl, having grown up in Fountain Inn, she is a highly organized person. And she has a driving interest in the town’s history and cultural changes over the years, with major ideas for presentations.”

Of Ukranian descent, Zivitski is a recent graduate of USC-Upstate in Spartanburg where she majored in Sociology. In the future, she wants to shape exhibits that build on research already done. “In viewing the exhibit, The Making of a Small Town, I was drawn to a 1920’s photo of the town band and wondered about a retrospective of Fountain Inn’s musical development through the years. That would make a fascinating cultural exhibit.”

The next major exhibition at the Museum deals with the history of The Golden Strip Speedway, the focal point of dirt track auto racing for many years. A good number of the participants are still around, and some still have their race cars. The tentative premiere of the project is this summer.

Another future exhibit in the Museum Gallery, The Centenarians, will feature Fountain Inn’s hundred-year-old homes. Research is now underway, searching for family information about the history of the homes. No exhibit date has been set.

Fountain Inn families who can provide information and memorabilia for these exhibits are urged to contact the Museum.

In other Museum news, a new Genealogy Center is currently under construction. The Center will build on information already in the Museum’s archives, steadily adding new material. It will be a service to Fountain Inn residents who wish to research their family ancestry.

Over the Christmas holidays, the Museum enjoyed festive decorations supplied by installed by the Fountain Inn Garden Club. This was the Club‘s first year of decorating the Museum and members hope it will become a tradition. 

The video On the Banks of Durbin Creek, installed in the fall, recounts the cultural changes that have transpired in Fountain Inn since the days of the Cherokee, showing those changes through and dress and ethnic diversity. In addition to its Museum showings, the video has been made available to school history programs free of charge.

 The Fountain Inn Museum is open Tuesday through Friday, 9 AM til 5 PM, and from 9 AM til 2 PM on Saturday■