After five and a half years of work, the latest book on Hazlet's history is now available.
Celebrating Hazlet and Our Community came out in two volumes on March 21st.
"We're writing a history of the Hazlet and district community," said committee member Patti Shannon. "We had put a book together in the 80s, and there was a group of people who felt there was a need for another history book. In 2019, we had a committee of nine interested people who wanted to put another history book together for the community."
A lot of the initial work was tracking people down to get their stories.
"We went through the yearbooks and made a list of everyone who went to school to start from there," Shannon said. "Then we used the old history books and tried to find the families and locate them to see if they wanted to contribute their history."
Shannon estimated over 200 families have their history in the books.
"It's a two-volume edition," she noted. "The first volume is mainly our community of Hazlet and area. The second edition is families, and we put it in family order A to Z with the index in the back."
The book wasn't exclusively for families who lived in the area.
"We kind of made it our mission to reach out and try to get people who had gone to school or had worked in Hazlet and area," Shannon said. "If they had just played and come to enjoy the regional park or were on ball teams over the years we just said if you want to be in the book, go for it!"
The committee ordered 900 copies of the book with pre-orders of 500. It was an exciting moment for the committee to actually get a physical copy of the book.
"Delighted," Shannon said. "Very happy. It was nice to get it in our hands. We were pretty excited with it."
You can buy them at the library and post office in Hazlet. They are also selling books at the Gun and Hobby Show in Swift Current this weekend.
There is also a QR code in the book leading to the Hazlet community website, where you can add family updates.
