Jun. 24—The American Association for State and Local History recently selected a Joplin sesquicentennial project for teenagers as a recipient of its History in Progress Award and its Award of Excellence.

During 2023, Joplin celebrated its 150th birthday with a yearlong program of events that included Iconic Joplin, which engaged youths ages 12 to 16 in local history by challenging them to build landmarks out of Legos. The program ran from December 2022 to June 2023 with teen teams collaborating to build six landmarks: Bonnie and Clyde’s hideout, the Crystal Cave, the Joplin Public Library, Grand Falls, the Olivia Apartments building and the Union Depot.

The three host organizations for Iconic Joplin were the Joplin Public Library, Joplin History & Mineral Museum and Creative Learning Alliance. Teams met with historians, Lego experts, architects and contractors. They also enjoyed private behind-the scenes tours of the landmarks they selected.

This year, AASLH conferred 47 national awards honoring people, projects exhibits and publications.

The History in Progress Award is given at the discretion of the AASLH Awards Committee. It is an additional award for an Award of Excellence winner whose nomination is determined to be inspirational, exhibits exceptional scholarship, and/or is exceedingly entrepreneurial in terms of funding, partnerships, collaborations, creative problem solving, unusual project design or inclusiveness.

A Lego rendition of the historic Olivia Apartments building with firefighters working to put out a fire on the roof received the People’s Choice Award at the finale of the Landmark Builds Iconic Joplin competition.

The creativity award for most innovative design was presented to the team that built Grand Falls, which used lights to simulate moving water in the falls, the largest continuously flowing falls in Missouri.

The technical award for best use of Legos to create a landmark was won by a team that created the Crystal Cave.

The storytelling award went to the team that built the Bonnie and Clyde hideout.

The AASLH awards program was initiated in 1945 to establish and encourage standards of excellence in the collection, preservation and interpretation of state and local history throughout the United States.