The Nampa and District Historical Society was formed in 1978, to collect and preserve the local history of the Nampa area. Their first project was the local history book Turning the Pages of Time, which covers the history of Nampa and Northern Sunrise County from 1800 to 1981. Following this project, the Society wished to establish a museum, and with great dedication, a group of volunteers started collecting items for a local museum.

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Nampa’s first museum opened in 1985 with objects collected from the community and exhibited in the old Baptist Church. In 1992, the Rucka House was acquired by the Historical Society and relocated to the museum grounds. Over the next several years, volunteers worked on restoring the building so that it could be used to display settler life. As the collections of the museum grew, so did their need for display space.

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In 2014, after three years of planning and building, a new Civic Centre was built housing the Nampa Museum in partnership with Northern Sunrise County and the Village of Nampa along Highway 2. The new 8300 square foot building was designed to resemble an old railway station, a nod to Nampa’s early beginnings as a railway stop. The outside exhibit area was installed first, with the CN caboose and historic Rucka house relocated to the site in 2013. The old water tank from 1916 was also restored and installed that same year. The Civic Centre was officially opened in the spring of 2014.

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In March 2017, the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Holy Ghost was relocated to the museum grounds from the hamlet of Reno, AB fourteen kilometers away. The church is open for tours in the summer and can be booked for private ceremonies.