The Pechora Historical and Local Lore Museum began its activities on July 31, 1969, as a public museum founded by Pyotr Ivanovich Terentyev. The first exhibition, titled "Lyapin Bread," was dedicated to the events of the Civil War in Pechora. In 1973, the museum moved to a two-story building at 33 Sovetskaya Street, where it still resides today.

The official opening of the museum took place on June 29, 1975. In 1977, it received the status of a state institution and became a branch of the Komi Republican Historical and Local Lore Museum. In 1993, the museum became independent and came under municipal management.

The museum actively develops new directions related to digital technologies, creating electronic directories and catalogs. Among them are: "Memory Archive," a database about Pechora residents who participated in the Great Patriotic War, a historical guide "One Hundred Streets of Pechora," a personal catalog dedicated to the 70th anniversary of M.Ya. Bulgakova's birth, and others.

The project activities of the museum are gaining increasing importance. Projects such as "To Civil Society through Youth Education," in collaboration with the city administration and public organizations, a project for the development of ethnotourism in the Middle Pechora region titled "Pechora, Golden Shores," the "Virtual Gulag Museum," as well as a project with the "Memorial" society have been implemented.

Since the 1990s, a fund of works by local artists and masters of decorative and applied arts has been formed, which includes 183 items. An important part of the museum's collection is dedicated to items from participants in the Great Patriotic War, including frontline letters, photographs, and notifications of death. The cards accounting for those mobilized into the Red Army, transferred to the museum by the Pechora Military Commissariat, are of particular value (56,000 items).

It is also worth noting the fund of the "Memorial" society, which collects materials on the history of political repressions in the Pechora district. This collection features the Kedrovoshorsky archive, containing documents from the agricultural department of the Kedrovoy Shor settlement in the Pechora district from the 1940s-50s (over 2,000 items).

The majority of the funds consist of materials on the history of the city, industrial and transport enterprises, as well as about the residents of the city and district. Due to the reorganization of some enterprises, public and departmental museums were closed, and materials from the Pechorstroy museum, the VPTU BUP museum, the history museum of the Pechora police, and the school museum of the village of Priuralskoye were transferred to the museum's funds. In the late 1980s, materials from the museum of the village of Byzovaya, which was closed due to unsuitable storage conditions, were transferred to the museum.