Whitman County, Ellensburg, Pomeroy and Columbia County Add to Collections
As part of their 2009 Washington Rural Heritage grant work, funded by LSTA, four libraries have added brand new material to their previously published collections.
Whitman County Library widened their digitization efforts this year and offered scanning services to patrons of all libraries in their district. Whitman County Heritage now includes material from all around the county — users can browse items by community from their home page and are able to view rare images from small towns like Ewan, Sunset, Malden and many more. The collection also includes items from several local cultural institutions. Be sure to check out the Palouse Empire Fair Collection, taken from scrapbooks containing ephemera and photos ranging from fair royalty and 4-H sewing entries to livestock and prize-winning exhibits. Even catch a celebrity sighting — local sons John Crawford and Yakima Canutt, famed actors from the 1970s, visited the fair.
Ellensburg Heritage now includes the Historic Transportation Photograph Collection, showcasing the planes, trains, automobiles, carriages and ferries used by travelers in decades past. See snowplows tunneling through 30 feet of snow, panoramic shots of the Ellensburg Air Base (be sure to zoom in for awesome detail!), and even a gang of ‘motorcycle fiends‘ that cruised around Ellensburg in the 1910s, “finding enjoyment in riding their machines up the precipice at the east end of Fourth Street.” Ellensburg also added to the Fred L. Breckon Historic Portraits Collection. See the town’s baker, doctor, and mayor.
This grant cycle, Columbia County Rural Library District embarked on a new effort to digitize graves from area cemeteries. View individual headstones from Bundy Hollow Cemetery, Covello Cemetery, and Highland Cemetery. Headstones are organized by cemetery and listed alphabetically on the left. Click a name to view the deceased’s headstone.
Newcomer Denny Ashby Library added the Garfield County Schoolhouse Collection to Pomeroy Heritage, featuring now-and-then images of the county’s schoolhouses, class photos and scenes from student life, including a rural tennis match. The collection also now includes images and video footage of the tramways used by area farmers to transport grain in the high bluffs to boats located on the Snake River. This ingenious system enabled farmers to quickly move their harvest several miles and to a much lower elevation without the aid of horses.
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