The DuBois Area Historical Society Inc. traces its origins to February 8, 1982, when Evo G. Facchine, president of the DuBois Chamber of Commerce and a future Society president, proposed founding a historical society at a Chamber event. Its first public contact came at an inaugural banquet on Thursday, Sept. 10, 1982, at the DuBois Country Club during the third Tom Mix Festival. The organizational drive was led by Dr. John Furlow, Dr. Louis Barsi, Marilyn Scherer, and Facchine, and a meeting a week later at the Chamber office resulted in the election of Furlow as president, Sam King as vice president, Lois Pegg as secretary, and Facchine as treasurer. The Society's constitution set its service area as the same as the DuBois Area School District. Lacking a building, the Society collected items that were stored for several years under the swimming pool at DuBois Area High School or in members' homes. Furlow and the Society's second president, Dr. George Nye, began regular meetings and activities. During the three years of the third president, Shirley Clark, the Society found its first home in a large third-floor room above Joe's Tux Shop on West Long Avenue, where display cases allowed the collection to be shown and meetings to be held, and where its genealogy component began under Clark's leadership. When the rent became unaffordable, the collection was boxed again and moved to a storage room on Brady Street. At the 1993 annual dinner, president E. D. Reitz announced that S and T Bank had accepted the Society's bid to purchase the building at 30 W. Long Ave., formerly used by Matthew's Book Store; the building was occupied in July 1994 and officially opened in September 1994. Several years later, the Society acquired 28 W. Long Ave., then used for storage, a former Lowe's Music Store whose inside back wall had survived the Great Fire of 1888. In 1999, it purchased 34 W. Long Ave., long Shively Jewelry Store, for a genealogical research library, and the three properties were joined by cutting doorways through the separating brick walls. The museum complex was named the E. D. Reitz Museum, with adjoining buildings known as the George Nye Annex, and the Evo G. Facchine Veteran's Room honored Facchine for proposing the room and completing the early work to establish it. The Society's logo was designed in 1983 by Thomas Hanzely, a seventh-grade student at DuBois Area Junior High School, whose contest-winning design featured DuBois's first three industries, lumbering, coal mining, and railroads, with a lasso recalling Tom Mix, who grew up in DuBois; a Tom Mix Festival was held there from 1980-89 and again in 1999.