Museum director David Clarke said the museum had been collecting historical images since 1948, when it originally opened near the site of Mondo cafe.
Arrowtown answered a call to open a museum in the district, to save precious artefacts before they were lost forever.
"Arrowtown was quick off the mark and had an empty building," Mr Clarke said.
A letter was circulated to residents in Queenstown, Wanaka and Arrowtown asking for any historical items - including photographs.
That call was answered and the museum now boasts an extensive collection of photographs, the oldest dating back to the late 1860s.
"A lot of them came from the early settlers . . . That was the thing to do, have your portrait taken [either full size] or the size of cigarette cards.
Everyone had an album with all their relations.
"Landscapes were popular to buy. Photographers went around side shows or fairs selling landscape [photographs]."
Mr Clarke said the collection also included an extensive number of postcards, resulting from the postcard "revolution" in 1910, when the price of postage dropped.
"Millions were sold in a couple of years all around New Zealand.
"A lot of them just had `How are you' on the back [and] a lot of those had Queenstown scenes on them."
Many residents around the district today still had postcard albums and occasionally those were left to the museum, Mr Clarke said.
As technology had changed, the archivists' job had also become easier.
"When I first started here, we had to photograph the photographs on film and process them in the darkroom."
Mr Clarke said images were now scanned directly into the archive system and the originals were stored in acid-free envelopes and barely touched, ensuring they remained in good condition.
While the early settlers were well represented in the museum's archives, Mr Clarke said the Cribbies Exhibition, which opened last year, had created a huge increase in photographs from the 1940s, '50s and '60s, but the museum now sought images from the '70s, '80s and '90s.
•Images published in the Queenstown Times through the Wakatipu Images series can be purchased from the Lakes District Museum for $15.
See the Lakes District Museum advertisement for more details.
