New digital collection: North Central Washington Heritage

New digital collection: North Central Washington Heritage

Billie Legg picking apples in Manson, Washington, 1924
Billie Legg picking apples in Manson, Washington, 1924 – click image to see larger version

From the desk of Evan Robb

Just as this year’s Washington apple crop is shaping up to be the second most productive season on record, a new Washington Rural Heritage collection documents our state’s long history of agricultural abundance in the heart of apple-growing country. The Foodways & Byways of North Central Washington Collection illustrates how the production, acquisition, and distribution of local food has played a central role in the history and development of North Central Washington.

For its 2011-2012 LSTA grant project, the North Central Regional Library (with a service area comprising one quarter of Washington State’s geography) partnered with the Wenatchee-based Initiative for Rural Innovation and Stewardship (IRIS). The partnership hosted five community-based digitization events at NCRL branches in early 2012, where more than 100 historic photographs from private collections and local historical societies were digitized for the collection.  Bringing together a wealth of unique material from Chelan, Douglas, Ferry, Grant, and Okanogan counties, the collection topics range from hunting & fishing, to the fruit and grain industries, to herding and range management.

Highlights include:

Baseball and sheep, Grant County, Washington
Baseball and sheep, Grant County, Washington – click image to see larger version

Congratulations to the North Central Washington Heritage partners–they join more than 80 cultural institutions in 30 communities throughout the state that have digitized material with assistance from the Washington Rural Heritage initiative. Washington Rural Heritage sub-grants are made possible with Library Services and Technology Act funding provided by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.

For more information about Washington Rural Heritage, contact Evan Robb, Project Manager: (360)704-5228, [email protected].

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