For Samuel Guddall, of Fort Dodge, a summer internship with the Webster County Historical Society turned out to be the ideal opportunity.

“Ths was just like the perfect place,” he said.

He used his graphic design skills to help make local history more accessible to more people.

Guddall did so by making posters promoting events held by the society. He also digitized old movies of Fort Dodge and uploaded them to the society’s Youtube channel.

-Messenger photo by Bill Shea
Samuel Guddall, who served as a graphic design intern for the Webster County Historical Society this summer, works on his computer in the Roger Natte Archives in the Fort Dodge Public Library.

His other duties included photographing old documents and uploading them. He also started some work on an educational tour of downtown Fort Dodge.

Guddall is a graphic design student at Iowa Central Community College who is on track to graduate in the spring of 2026 with an associate degree.

To complete all his degree requirements, he had to do an internship.

He has known Meg Beshey, a historical society board member, since he was in second grade.

That connection led to the internship that he started on June 13.

“I didn’t know this room existed,” Guddall said of the Roger Natte Archives in the Fort Dodge Public Library.

The room he previously did not know existed became his workspace for more than 120 hours over the summer.

Working with the videos was one of the more time consuming tasks he had.

Guddall said the historical society had a box of VHS tapes, some of which contained footage dating back to the 1950s. With VHS tapes and VCRs to play them being nearly extinct, a way had to be found to make it possible for anyone to see that footage.

Guddall converted nine videos to a digital format, then edited them on his laptop. Then the videos were uploaded to Youtube.

He said he has always loved the architecture of downtown Fort Dodge, and the images he saw on those videos were interesting to hm.

“It was really cool to see how it used to look and how it changed over time,” he said.

When not working on videos, he made two posters promoting events held by the historical society. Guddall won a Silver Award in the Iowa Community College Design competition this year, so he was well familiar with making designs to advertise and promote something.

The first was for a book signing by Al Cloud, who wrote a volume about his memories working in the old Fort Dodge creamery. Guddall got to tour the creamery building with Cloud.

His second poster promoted the World War II remembrance held today.

Guddall said when designing something he has to come up with a concept that will appeal to the client, the public and to himself as the artist producing the work.

He said for the World War II event poster, he wanted it to have a “focal point on the war being over, people being happy that the war was over.”

He found a photo showing people and their cars lining Central Avenue after it was announced that the war was over. That photo and one of military officers saluting became the images on the poster.

Those images were placed on a tan background to suggest a faded piece of paper that might have been around in 1945.

Guddall has completed his internship with a fresh appreciation for local history.

“There’s a lot of really interesting things you can find on Fort Dodge,” he said.