From the desk of Evan Robb

When construction of the Grand Coulee Dam was completed in 1941, much of the town of Kettle Falls disappeared beneath the rising waters of Lake Roosevelt.  About 300 individuals picked up and relocated to the site of present-day Kettle Falls, WA (a few miles away, in what had previously been Meyers Falls).  Our newest collection, from the Kettle Falls Public Library, tells the story of that original town (or “Old” Kettle Falls as it’s now known), from its incorporation in 1892, to its last high school class, to final relocation efforts.

One of our favorite documents in the collection is a short biography by Harrison Reed, whose family came to Washington in 1902, and homesteaded in Ferry County, on the side of the Columbia opposite Kettle Falls.  A few of Reed’s recollections include: the tiny town of Kettle Falls as he first saw it in October, 1902; crossing the Columbia by row boat to attend school; and accompanying Doc Brigham on his rounds to treat Spanish flu victims during the winter of 1919-1920.  Here’s a quick excerpt describing several rough years during the late 1920s-early 1930s:

My father passed away at 87.  A hale [sic] storm came through where the folks lived, ruined their crops, roofs and killed the chickens.  While raking hay I was thrown under a dump hay rake and dragged one quarter mile by a run away team, many cuts and bruises, but soon was all right.  Then came the depression years of the early thirties, bad years for us.  Margaret, Mable and Leta all had whooping cough and measles.  1930 lost my finger.  Prices were low.  Good two year old steers at twenty three dollars a piece.  Cows from four to ten dollars.  Cream average $1.50 per five gallon can.  Wages for hay hands 50 cents per day and board…I lost two good mares by a strange poisoning.

The Kettle Falls Collection also depicts the Falls themselves–for thousands of years, a critical salmon-harvesting and meeting point for tribes of the Columbia Plateau and beyond.  For an excellent summary of fishing on the Falls, as well as the later impact of the downstream cannery industry and dam development, take a look at this article from HistoryLink (a free online encyclopedia of Washington State History).

A big thanks to our participants at the Kettle Falls Public Library (Libraries of Stevens County) for their hard work digitizing and cataloging these materials.  Thanks to their expertise, individual and family names have been thoroughly indexed in this collection; it should serve as great resource for those researching Northeast Washington.

The Kettle Falls Collection can be accessed through Stevens County Heritage (browse all items in this new collection here).  Or if you’re simply at a loss for where to start, here are a few of our favorite images:

• Lizzie McKellar (from one of Kettle Falls’ original families).
• Fruitland irrigation flume.
• Fuller-Larsen-Kelly store.
• Hudson Bay Co. fort.
• Kelly Hill School, boys only.
• Kelly Hill School, girls only.
• Meyers Falls, WA (1900). The same view in modern-day K.F.
• Two men in ‘kettle’.

Ahh, it’s that time of year. Tulips are blooming, trees are beginning to bud and the occasional sunny day breaks through the Pacific Northwest’s endless, wintry rain. But most importantly, shelves are stocked with my all-time favorite treat: PEEPS! This sugary springtime staple makes my stomach queasy, my teeth ache and my head pound, but every year I go back for more. Though these marshmallow goodies hadn’t quite made it to Emerson’s in 1939, it seems that the citizens of Ritzville had plenty of sweet treats to satisfy.

Check out the larger version of Emersons Easter display from the town’s Washington Rural Heritage collection, and you’ll see a 10-cent PAAS egg-dying kit, a bounty of chocolate bunnies, quite an assortment of 8-for-a-penny monstrous jelly beans, and what I can only assume are the most giant Cadbury creme eggs I have ever seen (pardon the fuzziness of the zoomed image at left, I had to show you, or you wouldn’t believe me).

So hop to! Grab your annual ration of Peeps/creme eggs/giant chocolate bunnies before they’re gone. It’s a long year without ’em.

Curt Lokovsek of South Prairie, WA was exploring the Enumclaw Heritage collection recently when he spotted a couple of images that jogged his memory.  The photos portray a rail car carrying a steam donkey (once used in logging operations) that crashed through a bridge near “Good Water” sometime in the 1930s.  A former Weyerhaeuser employee who worked on road construction in the area from 1975-1986, Lokovsek was familiar with the location.  And he was sure that at some point he’d seen the remains of the wreck, still resting at the bottom of that same canyon. 

Relying on his knowledge of the area and using landmarks from these two photos, Lokovsek and some friends decided to take advantage of a recent sunny day and re-find the wreck.  He sent us the photo to the right, showing Barrett and Bailey Petchnick inside the steam donkey’s smokestack.  The smokestack can be seen in this photo–it’s the T-shaped object right below the wreck (according to Lokosvek, the stack has rolled a bit down the hill since the original photo).

We didn’t know much about these photos, except for the fact that they were probably taken by Augustus L. DeSpain, a mechanic and amateur photographer who worked for the White River Lumber Company and Weyerhaeuser, 1920s-1950s.  A big thanks to Curt for bushwhacking in to find what’s left of this skidder and adding some context to these photos.  It’s great to see local history buffs using Washington Rural Heritage in their research.

Also, thanks to Curt, we were able to pinpoint the exact location of this wreck and place these two images on the Enumclaw Heritage Map!

Washington Rural Heritage is rolling out new promotional bookmarks in time for WLA 2009 in Spokane.

Trouble is, there are so many great photos throughout our collections, that we can’t settle on just 5.  Will you help us?

We’ve selected 20 or so photos, cropped them to the bookmark shape of 2 in. x 8 in., and we want to know which ones you’d most likely tuck between your pages, tack to your cork board, or give out as Christmas gifts (hint: these make great Christmas gifts).

You can check them out on Library Development’s flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wsl-libdev/sets/72157614879774406/

Leave a blog comment letting us know your favorites. And if you think we’ve missed a really bookmark-worthy photo, let us know that too.

A new grant cycle is now open for Washington Rural Heritage.  The purpose of this grant cycle is to support small and rural libraries in the development of sustainable digitization programs.  To date, more than 25 libraries and cultural institutions throughout Washington have contributed to the initiative.

Overall funding to support this grant cycle is $50,000, with a maximum award of $10,000 per application.  It is anticipated that five (5) or more applicants may receive awards.  Grant awardees will be required to submit at least one hundred (100) items to the Washington Rural Heritage collection at the State Library by the end of the grant cycle (August 13, 2010).

Application deadline: Postmarked or received by April 24, 2009.  View eligibility guidelines, FAQs, and download application. For more information, contact Evan Robb, Project Manager – Washington Rural Heritage, 360.704.5228 or Jeff Martin, Grants Program, 360.704.5248.

LSTA funds for this initiative were made available by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The Washington Rural Heritage team has been digging for historic treasure around the state, making stops all over in our efforts to scout out our next collections. From Cathlamet to Metaline Falls and eveywhere in between, we saw mounds of photos, fascinating documents and extraordinary objects that we’re really excited about adding to the collection.

Though we’re still in planning phases for our digitization work for the upcoming year, we wanted to share with you a few highlights of what’s being stored in the state’s rural libraries and museums.

The Wahkiakum County Historical Society, perched on the banks of the mighty Columbia in Cathlamet, has an extensive local photo collection, including beautiful aerial photographs of the town’s early development.

The grassy, rolling hills of Garfield County predictably harbored wonderful agricultural items. We saw lots of farming photos, beautifully restored machinery and vehicles outfitted for cold-weather travel (we loved seeing one of the area’s first postal carriages, complete with mini stove and mail organizer at the Eastern Washington Agricultural Museum) and even Pomeroy’s founding father’s scythe.

The Metaline Falls Library in Pend Oreille County was a veritable zoo of images. Their historic scrapbooks are filled with unbelievable photos, including close-up shots of cougar kittens, the celebration around the spoils of a bear hunt, and – our personal favorite – a few images of local celebrity Black Beauty, the bag-punching dog.

These findings were just the tip of the iceberg of the materials we saw during our travels. We’re always looking for unique collections to add to our project in our efforts to help small, rural libraries preserve and provide access to their priceless historic holdings. Our grant cycle will open in the next few months; please contact us for more information.

Evan and Kirsten are the featured speakers on the upcoming First Tuesdays presentation. This free, web-based program begins at 9 a.m. on Jan. 13. We’ll discuss our mission and goals for the Washington Rural Heritage project, give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we operate, and share some stories about how WRH has impacted the libraries we work with.

According to moderator Susan Barrett, “First Tuesdays began as a service to small and rural libraries, but those from any library are welcome to take part. Branch staff should first check with supervisors. If you have never participated in any Wimba session, you will need to go through a quick set-up wizard first.”

For more information, or to access archived presentations, click here.

Temperatures are dropping, icicles are forming and the snow is falling! We’ve been slammed with winter weather in northwest Washington state, so as we snuggle into heated homes and offices and drive on freshly-cleared streets, we wanted to bring you a few reminders of days past when snowfall was a bit more inconvenient.

During Eastern Washington’s severe winter of 1936-37,  trains were buried, men hopelessly plowed snow with wimpy plows, and “the highway between Tekoa and Latah was closed all winter.”

Settlers in Enumclaw recalled some winters with horror. Crowded homes with minimal heating led to terrible disease; freezing conditions made travel nearly impossible, though hot water from a teakettle served to warm up the engines of Ford cars; and warm winter clothing was hard to come by: gunny sacks were the footwear-protector of choice.

Winter wasn’t always dismal, though. Early Washingtonians celebrated Christmas in drifts of white powder, and folks in Ritzville took advantage of freezing temperatures to flood a tennis court for ice-skating.

But perhaps our favorite snowy image is brought to us from Whitman County during the ‘big snow’ of 1937. We’re not sure what they were up to, or who was setting up a camera in such a frosty setting, but Pete and Govenor’s trek through the snow inspire us. What’s a few inches of snow compared to drifts looming over one’s head?

Enumclaw Heritage is live! The Enumclaw Public Library teamed with the Enumclaw Plateau Historical Museum to bring us incredible photos, documents and memorabilia of the area.

Check out a homemade photo album documenting the Boise Creek flood of 1965; read the first issues of Enumclaw High School’s newspaper, published in 1919; and see photographs of White River Lumber Company’s (later, Weyerhaeuser’s) locomotives.

We’re also excited to bring you Washington Rural Heritage’s first collection of oral histories. Listen to tales of early 20th-century life in this rural dairy community: a man recalling how the “federal people” would break up area stills during Prohibition; a telephone operator remembering dances that lasted until dawn; and fascinating stories of settler interactions with local Native tribes.

To access the oral history, click on the audio files at the bottom of the list of links on the left. These will be named “tape1_side1,” etc. Then click the link to “access this item.” If you’d like to read the accompanying text, click through the pages listed on the left side. You can also search these objects by typing words or phrases in the search box in the top left corner.

San Juan Island Heritage has become the second Washington Rural Heritage collection to be cataloged at the item level in WorldCat.  Washington Rural Heritage participants with published collections should expect to see their items similarly cataloged in the near future; the majority of these collections have been registered with OCLC and the crosswalk process from Dublin Core/xml to good old fashioned MARC is underway.

Also of note: according to Laura Tretter at the San Juan Island Library, October’s presentation on the Jim Crook Collection was a great success.  Over 70 people came to hear Mike Vouri’s talk about English Camp and the Crook Family.  Slides from the presentation are now available in the San Juan Island Heritage collection: The Crook Family: Caretakers of English Camp.