A half-century ago, Limestone County joined the rest of world in watching as NASA astronauts took man’s first steps on the moon.

This spring, the Limestone County Archives is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1969 lunar landing with “From Limestone to Moon Rock: Limestone County Connections to NASA and the Lunar Landing 50th Anniversary.” The exhibit will run through May 17 in the Archives’ exhibit space.

Presented in partnership with the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Smithsonian Institution, the exhibit features national award-winning student artwork and creative writing, views of Earth from space and photos from the Archives collection of local connections to the space program.

“We are excited to highlight the local connections to this event that made world history,” said Rebekah Davis, Limestone County Archivist.

More than 100 students in Limestone County submitted artwork, poetry and essays for the DAR’s Junior American Citizens Committee Contest, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing. Many of those students earned state and national honors for their work.

Laura Silvernail’s stamp design art earned first place in the national contest, while Anna Rae Brand and Logan Thompson each took second place national honors for their artwork.

In the poetry contest, Lillian Pennington won first place and Leighton Barksdale placed second in the national contest. Many other local students earned state and regional honors, and all the creative works are displayed as part of the exhibit.

The exhibit also includes the Smithsonian poster exhibit “Earth from Space,” which features 20 detailed satellite images of Earth, from the swirling arms of a massive hurricane and the grid-like pattern of Kansas farmland to the triangular shadows cast by the Great Pyramids and the sinuous channels entering the Arctic Ocean.

The posters illustrate how satellite imagery is gathered and used to expand mankind’s understanding of life on Earth. The display also explores the remote-sensing technology used to gather the images and describes the individual satellites whose images are on display.

The poster exhibition was born out of the popular and award-winning museum exhibition of the same name that premiered November 2006 at the National Air and Space Museum.

For the “From Limestone to Moon Rock” exhibit, archivists also dug into the collections of the Limestone County Archives to find unique views of the space program from two local photography and history aficionados: Frank Looney and Bob Dunnavant. On June 16, 1969, Looney, who worked at the Marshall Space Flight Center at the time, documented his whirlwind trip to Cape Canaveral and back, all in one day, to see the Apollo 11 launch with thousands of his space program colleagues.

Almost exactly one decade later, Dunnavant, who worked as a local newspaper reporter and photographer, documented the painstaking journey of the disassembled Saturn V rocket through Limestone County backroads to reassembly and a permanent home at the Alabama Welcome Center on Interstate 65 in Ardmore. Looney’s and Dunnavant’s photos from these events are on display.

The exhibit is open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday at the Limestone County Archives, 102 W. Washington St., Athens. For more information, call 256-233-6404 or e-mail archives@limestonecounty-al.gov.