The idea of creating a museum in Galich began to be discussed soon after the October Revolution. Local historians started collecting exhibits long before the official opening of the museum. Ivan Vasilyevich Yablokov, the head of the Galich city library and a student of historian V. I. Smirnov, chairman of the Kostroma Scientific Society, was particularly active. Since 1918, Yablokov was actively engaged in collecting exhibits for the future museum, visiting devastated estates, closed churches, and monasteries, from which he brought books, documents, weapons, furniture, and portraits. The museum officially opened on March 12, 1922, on the second floor of the building at Lunacharsky Street, 11, built in 1914 and previously owned by merchant I. M. Neshpanov.

Despite the lack of funds and staff, the museum gradually expanded its collections. On October 15, 1922, a library with a collection of about 2,500 volumes, mainly publications from the late 17th and the first half of the 19th century, began operating.

On April 11, 1927, the city council allocated part of a large stone building in the city center to the museum, and on August 16 and September 10 of the same year, the museum received additional premises. On November 1, 1927, it opened in a new location at Freedom Street, 18.

By 1929, the museum had departments for the history of the city, fine arts, historical and domestic life, ethnography, ancient Russian art, natural history, prehistory, historical-revolutionary, and industrial-economic. The library, manuscript, and photo archives were also expanded, reaching about 10,000 volumes by 1929.

In 1930, the museum moved to a more spacious room on the second floor of the former mansion of merchant Neshpanov. However, in the late 1920s, local historical research in Galich was curtailed due to persecution, and many documents were lost.

In 1984, the museum was transferred the restored Church of the Epiphany from the 17th century, and in 1993, the building of the former shops of merchant Neshpanov. In 2002, the church was returned to the believers, and the museum was provided with both floors of house No. 11 on Lunacharsky Street.