At 150 years young, the Mahoning Valley Historical Society has much to celebrate in its past, present and future.

Like the Youngstown-Warren metropolitan area that it has proudly represented for a century and a half, the society has preserved our region’s rich and robust past, serves as an essential community resource today and is rushing headlong into a period of dynamic growth and maturity in the months and years ahead.

As such, it deserves wholesale community support in celebration of its milestone sesquicentennial.

The society traces its birth to a Pioneer Ballroom Dance at the ornate Youngstown Opera House on Central Square in 1874, at which some of the first settlers in the Mahoning Valley gathered to share stories of the region’s rich rural roots during a period of rapid industrialization in the iron and steel industry.

One year later, that movement crystallized with founders voting for a constitution and electing officers to establish a new organization. Its purpose would be “collecting and preserving the history of the Mahoning Valley from its first settlement, the development of its resources in agriculture, mining and manufacturing; its development in education; and to perpetuate such history.”

The rest, of course, is history.

In the ensuing years of ups and downs in membership, support and fortunes for the Valley, the MVHS stayed steadfastly true to its mission of recording and preserving the life and times of our region.

And what times they were. From the community’s strong agricultural beginnings, the Youngstown-Warren area rapidly grew its economy and population largely as a result of its standing as one of the top steel producers in the United States and one of the major centers in America for immigration from faraway nations in eastern and western Europe.

Throughout the 20th century, the Valley also evolved as a center of culture with a world-class symphony, acclaimed community theater companies, the home base of the Warner Brothers and an internationally renowned art museum. On the down side, the Youngstown area also acquired a reputation as a hot spot for organized crime, particularly as a center of conflict between Cleveland and Pittsburgh factions of the mob. In later years, the Valley endured massive economic discombobulation when its steel industry suffered a rapid decline and death.

But through good times and bad, the MVHS has consistently worked to ensure remnants of our storied past would be preserved and remembered for posterity.

Today, that painstaking and detailed work is on clear display at several prominent MVHS properties that include the Arms Family Museum of Local History, the Tyler History Center and its Archives Research Center, all in Youngstown.

The Arms museum became a large public display space in the former Wick Avenue mansion of the late Wilford and Olive Arms 60 years ago. The first-floor rooms of their home show the family’s history and how they lived in the house from 1905 until their deaths. Rooms on the second floor and basement level were converted into exhibit and learning galleries for the MVHS collections and educational programs, thereby fulfilling the society’s larger mission through a versatile regional history facility.

MVHS’s next major growth spurt occurred 40 years ago, when its archival library and research center opened in the former carriage house behind the museum, where its collection of two-dimensional historic materials became more readily available for research and program development.

Its most recent physical growth and expansion took place in 2014 when the Tyler Mahoning Valley History Center opened in the heart of downtown Youngstown in the building where American confectioner Harry Burt created the classic Good Humor ice cream bar. The $4 million project created three exhibition galleries, a changing community gallery, spaces for learning about history and interacting with media and artifacts, an education center with classrooms and supplies for in-house learning units and special programs and a grand second-floor ballroom to host MVHS and community programs.

Today, the Valley’s leading organization for exploring the region’s past has its eyes focused squarely on the future. Late last year, the society purchased the former IBM Building on East Federal Street in Youngstown for $1.9 million and is now in the process of renovating it for additional display and storage space. Toward that end, the society under the stellar longtime leadership of Executive Director H. William Lawson has embarked on a capital campaign to fund needed renovations to the 44,000-square-foot building.

Given the remarkably strong imprint the MVHS has made on our Valley over the past 150 years and its promising contributions to our region’s future, that campaign and the society itself merit widespread community support and patronage.