'We will never forget you': Community’s grief, stories of Route 91 victims preserved in thousands of objects

A weathered straw cowboy hat, its brim half-torn. An unopened can of Coors Light. A woven rosary.

The three objects rest on a table in a back room of the Clark County Museum on Boulder Highway in Henderson.

They share one common point: They are all connected to the Oct. 1, 2017, Route 91 Harvest festival mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.

The museum has been collecting, recording and filing items since that horrific Sunday night when a gunman opened fire on a crowd of thousands, killing 58 and wounding over 800 more. Today marks the eighth anniversary of the tragedy.

The collection of items connected to the mass shooting — the worst in the nation’s history — has grown to around 22,000 pieces, from items left behind by victims of the tragedy to giant commemorative crosses and painted