The St. Claude Archives are looking to expand.

This past fall, they held a grow project and raised just over $30,000.

Francis is a member of the board. He explains further.

"It was the land around the municipal dump southeast of Elm Creek. It's about 110 acres in different little fields. We thrashed 134 bushels of clean seed off of the field after we were done combining."

The current archive building has been around in St. Claude for 20 years.

St. Claude Archives president Jerome Dondo says the goal of the project is to build a regional archive building.

"At this time in the Central Plains area, there is no accredited building to store archives. There are historical documents that are quite valuable, and some of them legislated by governments as to how long they should be kept, and are subject to environmental damage, mould, dust, and stuff like that," says Dondo. "This is going to be a building that's designed to protect and preserve historical documents."

They've been approaching different municipalities to get on board with the program.

Dondo says it's going to cost a pretty penny.

"The estimate is very preliminary because we're still in the starting stages in it, but we're already looking at a million to a million and a half dollars," says Dondo. "That's just based on the building we have at this point. Depending on what interest we have in the municipalities and what documents we have stored, we anticipate the price tag may go up."

They also have other fundraising efforts on the go including a mother's day breakfast.