Celebrating American Archives Month

October 24, 2019

Did you know that October is Archives Month? Did you also know that Caterpillar has a 13,000 square ft. state of the art archives in Mossville, IL? It is in this space that we store some of our rarest treasures; many that are well over 100 years old. 

The Caterpillar Archives was established in the 1950s during the publication of a corporate history book titled, “Fifty Years on Tracks.” To write the book, the author collected historical documents and images from our original locations in Stockton and San Leandro, CA, and Peoria, IL. 

Today, the archives is called Heritage Services, and its collection consists of over 1 million images, 1,000 artifacts, 25 antique machines, 300 pieces of art, and 100,000 digital assets. If you laid every box of paper records end-to-end they would stretch for 8 football fields. 

Heritage Services serves Caterpillar’s employees and dealers across the globe. Its stories of inspiration are told across Caterpillar’s communication channels. As their motto goes, “Artifacts tell great stories, and great stories inspire.”