KETCHUM — Mary Jane Griffith Conger was looking at historical kiosks in the Gold Rush town of Jacksonville, Ore., when inspiration hit her.

Ketchum needs something like this, she thought.

Conger, who helped found the Ketchum/Sun Valley Historical Society and Ski and Heritage Museum, wasn’t content to let it go at that.

She, daughter Lynndee Marin and son Jim Marin began sorting through family photos in century-old trunks that Conger had stashed away in her attic, pairing their family history with that of the Wood River Valley.

They put the best items on several panel boards, serving up little-known facts such as how Ketchum sent more soldiers per capita to fight in World War I than any other town in America.

Their words are illustrated with historical photographs of a 20-mule team pulling ore wagons up Trail Creek Summit, of Bald Mountain before it was landscaped for skiing, of the Dollarhide Mine and its miners, and of other long-gone sights.

“I’m so thrilled with how they came out,” Conger said, eyeing the eight boards. “Of course, there’s much more we could have put on them — like the Castle Rock Fire of 2007. That was a big deal.”

It could be said that Conger was made for such a task. Her grandfather, Albert Griffith, wandered into the Wood River Valley in 1879 in search of gold at the same time as Ketchum’s namesake, David Ketchum.

But while Ketchum left that winter, never to return, Griffith returned the following spring. He bought one of the first lots sold in Ketchum for $2 and helped build the town as he worked at the Elkhorn Mine and other sites.

Conger’s father, Bert Griffith, worked with the U.S. Forest Service for a brief stint before buying a grocery store in 1924. The store — now home to the new Cornerstone Restaurant — is the only Ketchum building on the National Register of Historic Places.

And Conger and her brother Jimmy — the first Ketchum native named to the U.S. Olympic Ski Team — grew up racing on Bald Mountain, while their mother watched through a telescope set up in the living room of their home on Leadville Avenue.

“Her family is Ketchum’s history,” said Chapter One bookstore owner Cheryl Welch.

Now that Conger has the panels in hand, she’s looking for a place to display them. She thought they might fit well in the new Ketchum town plaza, but designers had other plans.

She displayed them on Aug. 18 during a signing for her new book, “The Legacy of Al Griffith — A History of Ketchum, Idaho,” which she wrote as she researched information for the panels.

She hopes to display them when a Smithsonian exhibit titled “Journeys” opens at the Blaine County Historical Museum in Hailey in September.

Jeanne Flowers, who can trace her own family history back to early Ketchum, said she would love to see the kiosks at the Ketchum/Sun Valley Heritage and Ski Museum.

“They’re laid out very nicely and it’s always nice for people to be able to see panels like that,” she said. “I think it’s very interesting for local history.”