How to access text messages from years ago?

I have an iphone and have text messages that i would like to access from 2 years ago. I have not deleted the conversation, it is all stored on my phone, but it would take hours for my phone to load all of the conversations since then. Is there an easier way?

I doubt if they are still there since you fail to delete them, I clean my phone out every month. If not it eats up memory, and the phone it self will dump old data so to free up, space. Why would you save these, doesn, t make any sense. And no.