Published on Show Me Mizzou April 24, 2026
Story by Jon Hadusek, BJ ’12
Photos by Abbie Lankitus
On the fourth floor of Jesse Hall, in a spot best left a mystery, a system of ladders leads skyward some 180 feet above the Quad to the inner recesses of the dome.
Only select Mizzou students and faculty have made the mildly treacherous climb — the members of “secret societies” of decades past. Per tradition, they were allowed into the dome to paint their names and graduation dates in white onto the aged, exposed wood.
Such tags reach back to at least the early 1900s and cover practically every inch of the inner dome’s top tier, resulting in a visual spectacle hidden in plain sight and locked away. In recent years, Jesse Hall’s highest reaches have been updated with improved security measures to prevent student explorers from trying to enter the inner sanctum.
This inaccessibility is among the motivations behind a new 3D-scan project by the University of Missouri Archives. Archivists hope not only to preserve the physical history of the dome’s interior but also to make it visible for those who would never see its secrets otherwise.
“It’s important for the alumni who’ve gone here, who obviously can’t get up here anymore and who’ve never seen this,” says Haley Lykins, BA ’21, the public services archivist for University Archives. “It will also be useful if we get a reference question like, ‘I think my uncle was in a secret society, but I don’t know anything about it.’ Well, we could look for his name in the dome.”
Lykins helms a small team including scanners Jessica Totsch, PhD ’25, who works at the Museum of Art and Archaeology, and history graduate student Catherine Hutinett, BA ’21. Using iPads and a specialized app, they’ve been taking hundreds of pictures and panoramic scans that they compile into a 3D rendering. When the archives launches the digital exhibit, online visitors will be able to examine the inner dome much like Google Maps’ Street View, including the ability to zoom in to see the student tags. Lykins calls it “a way for us to bring that history to more people.”
As of press time, the project is still in progress, with university archivists gathering historical research on the organizations that accessed the dome through the years. The exhibit is expected to go live in late spring. After Jesse Hall, Lykins hopes to continue the project with other campus buildings.
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