Working With Hershey's Visual Archive: A Practical Guide
When you start digging into Hershey's company history through photographs, the first thing you notice is how scattered the material is. You've got images in the Milton S. Hershey Museum archives, some in corporate records, a few floating around in public domain collections, and a significant amount that still sits in binders nobody has digitized. Building a coherent timeline out of this mess requires a method, and the method matters more than the technology you use. The phrase itself points toward something specific — an internal Hershey HR platform called MyHR that reportedly includes a timeline feature with historical photos. If you're trying to access that, the path is straightforward but not always obvious. You log into the MyHR portal through the company's intranet at myhr.hersheys.com, navigate to the "Company History" or "Our Story" section, and there should be a timeline view. The photos are organized by era, and you can drill down into individual years. But here's the part nobody tells you: the timeline isn't always up to date, and the search function within it is rudimentary at best. I've had people spend twenty minutes looking for a specific photo that was there the week before because someone forgot to publish the latest batch of uploads from the archives team. Hershey's visual history spans roughly 1903 to the present. The earliest photos are glass plate negatives — yes, actual glass — held in the museum's conservation lab. Those don't appear on any digital timeline. What you'll find online starts around the 1930s, mostly promotional photography from the company's media relations department. The 1940s and 50s are surprisingly well documented because Hershey produced internal training films and employee newsletters with accompanying photos. The 60s through 80s get spottier — corporate priorities shifted, and a lot of that era's photography went straight into filing cabinets instead of being cataloged.
The innovation angle in the timeline usually highlights the chocolate manufacturing process, the expansion of the factory floor, and product launches like Hershey's Kisses wrapping machine in 1935 or the establishment of the Hershey's Chocolate World attraction. The legacy component covers the Hershey Trust, the school, and community development. These aren't always clearly separated in the MyHR timeline, which makes cross-referencing necessary if you want accuracy.
Building Your Own Timeline From Scratch
When the internal resources fall short — and they do, especially for anything pre-1950 or post-1990 — you build your own. Here's the workflow I use. Start with primary sources. The Milton S. Hershey Museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania holds the most complete collection. Their online catalog is at mshmuseum.org. You can search by date range, subject, and format. Download high-resolution files where available. For anything not in their system, check the Library of Congress — they have a substantial Hershey collection, particularly of advertising and packaging photography from the 1920s through the 1960s. The Smithsonian also has relevant material in their business history archives. Organize by decade. I use a simple folder structure: 1900s / 1910s / 1920s and so on, with subfolders for "Manufacturing," "Products," "People," and "Community." This keeps things searchable without overcomplicating the metadata. I name each file with a descriptive tag plus the year, like factory-floor-1937.jpg or kisses-wrapper-machine-1935.jpg.
Get the Full Details
For the timeline itself, I use either Adobe Lightroom's slide show feature for a visual draft or import the photos into a tool like Timeline JS, which is free and generates an embeddable web timeline from a Google Sheet. The Google Sheet approach is worth learning because it gives you more control over what appears and in what order. Columns you need: Date, Title, Description, Image URL, and Source. The Source column is critical — every image needs a citation because you'll be asked where you got it, and you need to know whether it came from the museum, the Library of Congress, or a third-party archive.
Common Problems and How I Handle Them
The biggest issue I run into is inconsistent dating. Photos from the Hershey archives sometimes have only an approximate year, and the Museum's catalog doesn't always reflect the uncertainty. I've found myself placing a photo from 1942 on a 1943 milestone because the archive listing said "circa 1940s" and the closest documented event was in '43. I mark everything uncertain with a question mark and note it in the description field. Don't pretend precision you don't have. Another problem is resolution. Scanned glass plates and early film negatives often come out at 200 DPI, which is fine for a screen display but useless if anyone wants to print. When that happens, I request a fresh scan from the museum's conservation staff. It takes about two weeks and costs nothing for researchers, but you have to email them directly — there's no automated request form. I usually ask for 600 DPI TIFF files and specify that the image should be flat-scanned without any color correction so the original tonal values are preserved. A third issue that catches people off guard: copyright. Photos from before 1929 are generally in the public domain. Anything between 1929 and 1963 is murky — some were properly copyrighted, some weren't, and the Hershey company may still hold rights regardless. My rule of thumb is to treat anything post-1963 as requiring permission and to get written clearance before publishing. For pre-1929 material, I still credit the source but don't assume it's free to use commercially without checking.
What the Timeline Misses
The MyHR Hershey timeline, like most corporate histories, emphasizes achievements and omits complications. The company's labor history during the 1930s and 40s, the racial dynamics of the town's development, and the environmental impact of the factory's expansion are largely absent. If you're building a timeline for internal consumption, this curated version works fine. If you're doing anything academic or public-facing, you need supplementary sources. I pull from university theses on Hershey, PA's development, newspaper archives from the Daily Item, and the oral history project at the museum. These give you the full picture without undermining the official record. The MyHR timeline also lacks context for why certain events matter. A photo of a new packaging line from 1978 means little unless you know that 1978 was when Hershey shifted from direct distribution to relying more on supermarket chains, which changed the entire logistics operation. I add explanatory captions to every image in my versions — one or two sentences that explain the significance, not just what the photo shows.
Practical Output Options
Once your timeline is built, you have a few ways to present it. A web-based Timeline JS embed works for sharing links. A printed booklet is useful for archive references or conference materials. A static webpage with thumbnail rows organized by decade is the simplest option and requires no special software. I default to the static page approach because it loads fast, works on mobile, and doesn't depend on any platform staying online. If you're working with the MyHR system internally, the main benefit is that the photos are already authenticated and the dates are verified by company historians. The downside is that you're locked into their organization and their editorial choices. Most people I know who do serious research end up building their own timeline alongside the MyHR version, using it as a starting point rather than a final source. The Hershey collection is large enough that no single timeline will ever be complete. The best approach is to treat whatever you find as a foundation and leave room for additions. New photos surface regularly — a retired employee will dig up a box from the attic, or a donor will contribute a portfolio to the museum. If you build your timeline with a clear structure and proper citations, adding new material later is straightforward. Starting from scratch every time something new turns up is not.
