ROGERS — Dale Webster, former owner of House of Webster, worked at the Coca-Cola bottling plant on Poplar Street in the 1950s when he was a high school student.

Webster, now retired, remembers a great deal about Rogers after World War II, which makes him a possible subject for a major research project designed to help develop two new permanent exhibits at the Rogers Historical Museum.

The exhibits will be a part of an expansion of the museum, fundraising for which is now under way.

“Rogers was a much smaller and more rural community than it is now,” Webster said Monday. “Back then, everybody knew everybody else. When I graduated from high school in 1955, I knew every one in the senior class, about 100 people.”

Rogers remained a small town of well-established small businesses for many years, but that began to change when Beaver Lake was built in the 1960s.

“That’s when Rogers and Northwest Arkansas began to change from a quiet rural town to a city,” Webster said.

The museum staff is doing research and design for the new exhibits, said John Burroughs, assistant museum director. Funding for the design and research is through a $147,860 grant the museum received in July from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

“One of the exhibits is entitled ‘American Heartland — The Spirit of Entrepreneurship.’ It deals with the people who help build Northwest Arkansas and the impact industry had on the region,” Burroughs said.

The exhibit will include photos of movers and shakers from the era and oral histories from people who lived in the area during the 1940s through the 1960s.

“They asked me to do an audio history,” Webster said. “I don’t know how good I will be, but I’m pleased to be asked and will help if I can.”

“We are going to need help from area residents. We want to record some oral histories, gather some photos of Rogers during the 1940s through the 1960s and 1970s, and research local newspaper archives, old phone books and other material,” Burroughs said.

The second exhibit is entitled “Our Place” and deals with the economic changes that have affected Rogers and Northwest Arkansas, the continuing challenge of growth and the region’s future, Burroughs said.

“It going to take some time to do the research, design and build the exhibits. When it’s done we will have some interactive exhibits that are informative and fun for museum visitors,” Burroughs said.

Construction of the museum addition is sometime away, said Gaye Bland, museum director.

“We are moving ahead on both fronts, raising money for the expansion and designing exhibits. I don’t expect we will break ground for the expansion until 2014 or later. It depends on how fast we can raise the money to build the expansion,” Bland said.

Museum officials are working behind the scenes with possible large donors, Bland said.

“We won’t start our public fund drive until later. We are still in the early stages of a capital campaign,” she said.