“Pacific Northwest in the Gypsy Brigade of World War I” Museum After Hours
Fort Walla Walla Museum volunteer J.D. Ray discusses the service record of the 66th "Gypsy" Field Artillery Brigade during World War One and the history of the two French 155mm GPF guns now on museum grounds. The two regiments in the 66th (146th and 148th Field Artillery Regiments) were first formed in 1917 with National Guard units from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. They would ultimately see more combat in 1918 than any other American outfit equipped with French 155mm cannons; the entire American military in World War One expended 264,000 rounds of 155mm artillery shells, and the 66th Field Artillery Brigade accounted for over half of that number.
“Maya Lin, Public Art, & the Confluence Project” Museum After Hours
Whitman Professor Matthew Reynolds’ book about Maya Lin and the Confluence Project came out last spring. The first scholarly monograph devoted exclusively to this vital work of contemporary public art, this book examines Maya Lin’s Confluence Project through the lens of environmental humanities and Indigenous studies.
Matthew Reynolds provides a detailed analysis of each earthwork, along with a discussion of the proposed final project at Celilo Falls near The Dalles, Oregon. The book assesses the artist’s longtime engagement with the region of the Pacific Northwest and explores the Confluence Project within Lin’s larger oeuvre. Several consistent themes and experiences are common amongst all the sites. These include an emphasis on individual, multi-sensory encounters with the earthworks and their surrounding contexts; sound as an experiential dimension of landscape; indexical accounts of the multicultural, multi-species histories of each place; and an evocation of loss.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, environmental studies, environmental humanities, and Native American studies.
“The Curious Mr. Matsura, Revisited” Museum After Hours
Dan Lamberton is a retired Walla Walla University professor and former Humanities Washington speaker who has recently finished an in-depth study of Japanese photographer Frank Matsura. In the early 1900s, he emigrated to Washington and settled in Okanogan County. There, he embedded himself in a community of Native people and homesteaders, documenting the community that welcomed him.
“Green Gold: The Green Pea Era in the Blue Mountain District” Museum After Hours
From a single acre planted in 1932 on a dryland farm outside Athena, Oregon, the green pea industry in the Blue Mountain District grew through the throes of the Great Depression to eventually encompass over 100,000 acres.
At its peak in the early 1960s, 20% of the nation’s canned green peas and over 25% of its frozen products came from the Tri-State area of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Innovations such as vine-compressing truck beds, harvesting equipment, and plant automation machinery spawned millions of dollars in economic activity. The over two hundred growers and the numerous processing plants employed thousands of seasonal laborers and hundreds of year-round employees. The processing plants—eighteen at the height of production—changed the communities in which they resided. A culture grew up around the harvest with a Pea Queen crowned in an annual Pea Festival held in mid/late May before harvest started. Numerous ancillary industries sprang up or expanded to handle the late spring/early summer crop.
Few signs of the vitality of the industry are still visible in the District; plants have been razed or re-purposed, farms have been converted to other crops or placed in conservation reserve programs, even the growers—some generations in the business—are disappearing. This month’s presenter, Al Cummins, author of The Green Pea Era has undertaken to preserve memories and facts of the era for current and future generations.
"The Lost Apples Project" Museum After Hours
David Benscoter founded the Lost Apple Project, a nonprofit organization that searches abandoned farms and orchards in the Inland Pacific Northwest for old varieties. In the 1900s, about 20,000 known varieties of apples grew across North America. Now, there are less than half that number. Since 2014, he has found 29 different varieties that were previously thought to be extinct, some dating back to Grover Cleveland’s first presidency in the 1880s.
His presentation will cover his work saving these fruit varieties, and his book, “Lost Apples: The Search for Rare and Heritage Apples in the Pacific Northwest,” which is a catalogue of some of the apples he’s rediscovered and their interesting histories. Listen closely and you may hear what role the Museum’s own apple tree had in helping Benscoter’s continuous endeavour to save the rich tapestry that is apple agriculture.
"Civil War Medicine" Museum After Hours
Stan Southern has been studying the Civil War since he was seven. Since then, his interest in the subject has only grown. Fort Walla Walla Museum is excited to welcome him for our April Museum After Hours.
His presentation will cover what medical care for Civil War soldiers looked like, supported with an impressive collection of artifacts.
"Early Missionaries in the Pacific Northwest" Museum After Hours
Robert Heacock is a Kennewick, Washington native and resides in Liberty Lake (Spokane), Washington. His career was in Pacific Northwest agribusiness, insurance claims and investigations, and project management. He graduated from Washington State University in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics.
He is a member of the Washington, Oregon, and Idaho Chapters of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc., past President of the Washington Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, and is a member of the Foundation Board of Directors and committee member. He is also an Officer and Historian of the Spokane Westerners Corral and a member of the Ice Age Floods Institute.
Robert is a frequent contributor to the Washington Chapter LCTHF newsletter Worthy of Notice and the PNW Region newsletter Course & Communication. He is also the author of "Wind hard from the west - The Lewis and Clark Expedition on the Snake and Columbia Rivers".
His presentation, Early Missionaries in the Pacific Northwest, was awarded second place in the Philip A. Danielson Award for Best Presentation or Program of 2023 for Westerners International.
Since 2017, Robert has been a Historian on the cruise boats of the Columbia and Snake Rivers cruise boats with Uncruise Adventures, National Geographic/Lindblad, and American Cruise Lines, and he enjoys sharing the history and splendor of the Pacific Northwest with others who enjoy travel.
"The History of Automobile Dealerships in Walla Walla" Museum After Hours
"The Head of Auto Row" is a documented tagline used by one of the earliest (and largest) dealerships in Walla Walla and refers to the corner of Alder Street & Spokane Street. Around that corner within a block or two was the early central location for a number of dealerships.
R.L. McFarland, February’s speaker cites Joe Drazen's site as critical to the research of the early history of automotive dealerships. An archive of everything over decades. So the mystery of "sleuthing out the context" emerges. That is where Up To The Times and the "Reverse Directories" have proved invaluable.
This is the journey that R.L. has taken to stitch together and create/provide context, allowing the viewing audience to better connect with what's in the photos and then pull up bits and pieces of memories of their own to add to the story.
This Museum After Hours presentation is generously sponsored by Lloyd's Insurance and Real Estate. Thank you for making this event possible!
"Lunar New Year's Dragon Dance in Walla Walla" Museum After Hours
Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations have intrigued Walla Wallans since its earliest days. Pei-lin Yu and Susan Monahan will describe the colorful Lunar New Year rituals of the town's Chinese community over time, sharing historic photos, newspaper accounts, and residents' memories of the holiday.
And what about that Dragon Dance that was the showpiece of Walla Walla parades in bygone days? Come hear about the recent discovery of the location of the actual dragon—he has a name and still exists-- that danced in our streets over a hundred years ago.
Lunar New Year celebrations are happening here in Walla Walla in January and February. Susan and Pei-lin will share local opportunities for the community to participate in this colorful holiday.
About the Presenters:
Pei-Lin Yu is the Tribal Liaison for the US Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District. She is also Affiliate Professor of Anthropology at Boise State University, and a Fulbright Senior Fellow. Her research interests include the cultural heritage of Chinese communities in the American West, and ancient hunting and gathering lifeways.
Susan Monahan is a local historian with a special interest in our Chinese Community history. She contributes articles to the UB, has given frequent talks at Fort Walla Walla Museums's After Hours, and coordinates the museum's Living History Program
"New Mission, Same Legacy: Marcus Whitman & his Shifting Purpose in Cayuse Country" Museum After Hours
Join us as we explore how Protestant, American missionary Marcus Whitman, shifted his purpose while working with Cayuse and Walla Walla peoples within the Cayuse nation.
Whitman was funded as a Presbyterian missionary and began this work in 1836. After a few years, and the introduction of the new “Oregon Trail,” Whitman made a distinct pivot in his work: away from doing missionary work with Cayuse and Walla Walla people, focusing his time and energy instead on aiding and supplying Oregon Trail immigrants.
Americans today, especially those in the West, know of Whitman as a martyred missionary; this talk aims to expand the knowledge of what Marcus Whitman was doing in Cayuse Country and encourage reevaluation of his life and legacy.
Kate Kunkel-Patterson is an interpretive Park Ranger for the National Park Service at Whitman Mission National Historic Site in Walla Walla, Washington. Her passions include working with the public to explore complex histories that challenge assumptions.
"The Nez Perce War: Geography and Geology along the Route" Museum After Hours
Chased by the US Army from June to October of 1877, the Nez Perce tried to reach Canada from their homeland in the Inland Northwest.
With their women, elders, children, and livestock, they left their valley northeast of the Wallowa Mountains, crossed the Snake River in flood, navigated the many mountains and valleys of the northern Rocky Mountains, encountered tourists in five-year-old Yellowstone National Park, avoided the federal troops by descending into the canyon of Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River, and fled north across the Great Plains. The Nez Perce surrendered in north-central Montana, only 40 miles from the Canadian border.
Their route crossed a variety of plutonic, volcanic, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks from most periods of Earth history, from 2.7 billion years ago to 600,000 years ago. These rocks not only formed on and near the North American continent, but also include exotic terranes from across the Pacific Ocean; they record at least four episodes of mountain building.
Speaker Dr. Robert Carson to present.
"ALL ABOARD! It's 1875 and the Railroad Is Coming to Walla Walla" Museum After Hours
If you have lived in Walla Walla for any length of time, you have heard the distant horn of diesel locomotives as they go about their switching chores. The sound usually echoes off the buildings and greets the early risers. But…did you know that engines have been making that sound with whistles, horns, and bells for the past 149 years? The stretch of railroad from Walla Walla to Wallula is the oldest point-to-point rail operation in the State of Washington.
Fort Walla Walla Museum is in the process of restoring one of the original engines on the WW&CR. The fourth of six engines owned by the railroad, the BLUE MOUNTAIN, is currently on display.
Please join us for this extensive history of the first RR in Washington often taken for granted but so important to us and those who settled the area a century and a half ago. All Abooooard!
This month’s free Museum After-Hours program will feature the incredible Gary Lentz.
Charismatic Crustaceans: Exploring the Columbia through The River Mile Crayfish Study
Pauline Schafer, Education Manager at the REACH Museum in Richland, shares how students are gaining an understanding of the river ecosystem and contributing data to a survey of the Columbia's crayfish populations. These easy-to-find creatures are a hit with community scientists of all ages and can help us understand water quality and invasive species interactions. Learn about crayfish and how the study is getting elementary through high school students involved with science and conservation at the REACH.
About the REACH Museum: Our mission is to inspire learning by sharing the stories of the mid-Columbia River region, its people, and its impact and contributions to the world. The museum's place-based educational programs connect students to their community's history and the Hanford Reach's ecosystems. The REACH Museum is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.
About the speaker: Pauline Schafer has been an Educator at the REACH since January 2016. When she moved to the Tri-Cities she was happy to find the REACH as a place to learn all about the history, wildlife, and geology of the region. She has worked in education for over 20 years in various outdoor programs and nature centers, including the forest of southern Indiana, the tallgrass prairie of Iowa, the coastal mountains of California, and wetlands in Texas. She enjoys helping learners of all ages connect with the land and its human history.
Swords & Sabers of the U.S. Military
James Payne will be presenting this month’s Museum After Hours on a particularly sharp topic. Enjoy a century of sabers with illustrations and examples.
Museum After Hours: Color of Threads Film Screening
Join Fort Walla Walla Museum on Thursday, July 25th, for the last free screening of the new short film, Color of Threads. Lynelle Ellis, executive producer, and Matthew Webster, producer will both be present to briefly introduce the film and hold a question and answer session after the screening. This will be a great opportunity to see the short film and talk to the minds behind its production.
“Our 24-minute short film brings the tempestuous world of 1909 Pendleton, Oregon to your screen. Join five women as they fight to secure a job at the Pendleton Woolen Mills and a future in the turbulent post-Civil War climate of the American frontier.”
Museum After Hours: A Tale of Two Houses, the Sequel - The Ward & Small-Elliot Homes
Susan Monahan, a writer on local history topics for the “Walla Walla Union Bulletin,” and Steve Wilen, a historian and photographer who published the book Walla Walla: Past and Present, will speak about two of Walla Walla’s historic homes they haven’t analyzed for an audience before. Do join us for Museum After Hours on June 27 at 5 p.m.
Museum After Hours: Do No Harm
Imagine spending two and a half years in an unknown wilderness with no access to health care or a physician. You face daily challenges from bears, snakes, broiling sunlight, immobilizing cold, swift rivers, steep mountains, stomach bending food or no food at all, muscle stretching marches and rump bumping horse rides. How do you treat the blisters, bites, stomach upsets, wounds, and cramps?
This program will provide the answers as to how it was done in the early part of the 19th century.
Museum After Hours: Historic Tourism in Dayton
Get ready for an incredible journey into Dayton, WA's fascinating history! Join us as we host the amazing Erika Greenup at the Fort Walla Walla Museum for an hour-long presentation that will transport you back in time.
Discover the secrets of the oldest operating courthouse in Washington State, witness the charm of the two oldest standing train stations (one turned into a house), and take a look inside an original 1920s Columbia County schoolhouse.
But that's not all! Erika will also share the gripping tale of the "quarantine cabin" from the Smallpox outbreak and unveil the history of the Boldman House Museum, originally the residence of the builder of Dayton's first hospital.
Don't miss this unique opportunity to connect with the past and delve into the rich heritage of Dayton, WA! Mark your calendars and join us for a historical adventure you won't forget.
This talk will take place on-site in the Grand Hall at 4pm, this month an hour earlier due to the change of our winter hours. Museum After Hours is a public education and outreach series we’ve offered since 2014. They are free to attend for the public. Talks run for around 45 minutes, typically with a PowerPoint or other visual program, with some time at the end for Q&A.
Museum After Hours: A New Lease on Old Lifeways
A New Lease on Old Lifeways: Leasing & Allotment on the Umatilla Indian Reservation
Speaker: Groover Snell
Tradition & community within the constraints of the reservation system.
Museum After Hours: Agrarian Art and the Purpose of Existence
Harvest since time immemorial was understood in ritual terms to be... essentially the purpose of existence." These words recently expressed by a prominent European historian affirm the abiding value of agriculture as the bedrock of civilization. In an age when connections to the land grow more distant with the rise of suburban and urban populations, many consumers take for granted the abundant supply of food found in grocery stores, farmers markets, and available now online.
Museum After Hours: History of the Pendleton Round-Up
As a follow-up to July’s presentation on the Happy Canyon Indian Pageant, a representative of the Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon Hall of Fame will provide a deep dive into the Pendleton Round-Up. The presentation will provide a historic timeline of the Round-Up that highlights the benchmarks that have fostered the endurance of the event for over 110 years that demonstrates how it continues to represent the western lifestyle and heritage of the West. Ample opportunity will provided for questions and answers that help uncover everything you ever wanted to know about the Pendleton Round-Up past to present.
Museum After Hours: Happy Canyon — The Century-Old Indian Pageant and Wild West Show
Author Becky Fletcher Waggoner will be presenting a program about the unique 107-year-old history of the Happy Canyon Show, the World’s Oldest Indian Pageant and Wild West Show. The Happy Canyon Show has brought together families, friends and strangers to witness a joyous celebration of local history.
Museum After Hours: On Almost the Exact Same Land—Creating Historical Places
History is often tied to place and time. But how are historical places created? How do we turn our landscapes into something that is historic? Put up a monument, preserve old buildings, and place interpretive signage? Living history, the practice of embodying and performing history for an audience, also has a hand in creating historical places. Looking at the twin case studies of Fort Nisqually Living History Museum (Tacoma, WA) and Fort Walla Walla Museum (Walla Walla, WA), we will talk about the role living history programming and its interpreters play in imagining spaces as historical places - especially when old buildings no longer stand in their original locations!
Museum After Hours: A Tale of Two Houses
If these walls could talk... Join Steve Wilen and Susan Monahan as they delve into the history of two of their favorite Walla Walla homes: the John Langdon home on Isaacs and the H.P. Isaacs home on Brookside. The presenters will tell the intriguing stories and secrets of these two historic houses: who built them, who has lived there, and their significance to the rich history of Walla Walla.
Museum After Hours: The Lynching and the Law—Frontier Justice in Walla Walla in 1891
The story begins like a cinematic cliche from a Hollywood Western but plays out like a Greek tragedy. Act one: A professional gambler and a cavalry trooper confront each other in a frontier saloon. The source of contention? The affections of a “fair, but morally frail, damsel.” Their conversation becomes tense, then angry, laced with profanity. Suddenly, the gambler draws a pistol, fires a single shot, and mortally wounds the soldier.
Museum After Hours: Deserts of the Pacific Northwest
The Secret Life of the Desert: Deserts of the Pacific Northwest is a series dedicated to discovery and education of the vast and complicated desert regions of Oregon and Washington. Many hundreds of species of plants and animals live in these stunning landscapes. All these living organisms survive because of relationships, dependencies and arrangements while in the most arid places here in the spectacular Pacific Northwest. Discover how and why these desert areas are outstanding treasures and deserve your care and attention.
Museum After Hours: The Transformation of Whitman College, 1975-2015
David F. Schmitz, the Robert Allen Skotheim Chair of History at Whitman College, will present on his book The Transformation of Whitman College: From a Regional to a National Liberal Arts College, 1975-2015. His talk will focus on the challenges of researching and writing the book, the problems the College faced in the the mid-1970s, the key decisions made to address these problems, the main transformations that took place, and the highlights from the forty year period of the College's history.
Museum After Hours: Diversity and Unity in the Walla Walla Valley
Daniel Clark will present on the history of the various ethnic groups in the Walla Walla Valley, as well as other ways we are diverse, and the activities of the Walla Walla Diversity Coalition and the new Walla Walla Civility Project. Both are groups seeking to promote better understanding as well as mutual respect and cooperation in our community.
Museum After Hours: Bob Carson shares "A Short History of the Earth" from -4.54 Ga to +250 Ma
Presentation by Whitman Professor Emeritus Bob Carson. “A Short History of the Earth" from -4.54 Ga to +250 Ma
Museum After Hours: Tribal Place Names in the Walla Walla Valley
A speaker from Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, the 45,000 square foot tribally owned museum on the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, Oregon, will be joining us for a presentation. Details to be announced.
MAH: Music in the Westward Expansion—Songs of Heart and Place in the American Frontier
Author and musician Laura Dean will be sharing a program about musical migration in America. Many people have heard of The Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Oregon Trail, and the Westward Expansion, but few are aware that music played a significant role in the movement. The diverse cultural landscape of the Old West included Northern Cheyenne courtship flute makers, fiddle-playing explorers, dancing fur trappers, hymn-singing missionaries, frontier flutists, girls with guitars, wagon driving balladeers, poetic cowboys, singing farmers, musical miners, and preaching songsters. She offers a new look at an old story, discovering again and again how music sustained these travelers, provided joy, and often eased tensions between disparate groups along the trail.
Museum After Hours: Ice Age Megafloods
Geologist and author Bruce Bjornstad will be talking about the catastrophic Ice Age Megafloods that shaped the landscape of the mid-Columbia basin.
Talk begins at 5 pm.
MAH: Saving the Historic Fire Towers of the Blue Mountains
The mission of the Friends of Blue Mountains Lookouts (FOBML) is the repair, renovation, and maintenance of forest fire lookouts, ground cabins, and guard stations in the National Forests of the Blue Mountains in Southeastern Washington and Northeastern Oregon. Many of these facilities were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a job relief program that employed young men on environmental and conservation projects during the Great Depression. The very nature of these structures and buildings is a historical look at how we viewed our great forests and sought to protect them. Bob Bonstead has his own history with these structures. As a Hot Shot firefighter in the Toiyabe National Forest in the late 1960s, he connected with these structures during his dangerous work. Now, his mission as the FOBML Director is to help preserve our local fire history before it disappears.
MAH: Journeys into the Hanford Site
“Journeys into the Hanford Site” examines the history of the Hanford Nuclear Site with a focus on the Manhattan Project and Cold War (1943-1990). Briefly covering the indigenous and Euro-American settler histories, the presentation will weave historical images, oral history narratives, and primary source research to tell the impact of defense weapons production on Hanford and the surrounding communities.