Mullan Road Conference, 2012

The Mullan Road is one of the under-studied  topics in Pacific Northwest History. Built by Lieutenant John Mullan of the U.S. Army in 1859 and 1860, the Mullan Road was the first wagon road over the northern Rockies. Linking together the height of steam navigation on the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, it completed the route of commerce across the continent that Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to discover almost half-a-century before.

The portion of the road over the Rockies did not last long. Parts of it was destroyed by floods the year it was completed, and despite repair attempts the road was closed by 1861. Yet other sections of the road remained in use for decades, and the modern Interstate 90 follows the same route through the mountains today.

In recent years interest in the Mullan Road has grown, including an annual conference. The 2012 Mullan Road Conference, will take place April 13-15, at Walla Walla, Washington. This year's conference is organized by the Mullan Road Project Staff at Eastern Washington University(which I can tell you is mostly Bill Youngs and his students!)and the Walla Walla Mullan Road Sesquicentennial Committee.

I will be giving a presentation "Creating Historical Tours for Smartphones" on Saturday at 10 am. According to the schedule "Cebula ... will present his experiences in developing "Spokane Historical" a multi-media smartphone app for Spokane History, and he will suggest ways that this technology could be applied to touring sites along the Mullan Road." I guess I had better write that presentation! I hope to see some of you there.

With Marcus and Narcissa to Pensacola

I just got work that my proposal has been accepted for the 2011 Annual Meeting of the National Council on Public History Conference in Pensacola this April. I am excited because the NCPH is by miles the most interesting history conference and Pensacola sounds pretty nice as well. Here is the proposal I submitted:

The Many Deaths of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman

The killings of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman cast a long shadow in the Pacific Northwest. Since the American missionaries died at the hands of their Cayuse charges in 1847, their deaths have been reinterpreted with each new generation according to its own needs and preconceptions. Today the landscape of south-central Washington and north-central Oregon hosts numerous and contradictory interpretations of the deaths of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman--morality plays with different moral lessons.

My presentation will look at some of the different ways that this controversial historical event is and has been presented in monuments, museums, and other public places. In particular I will focus on three locales: Whitman Mission National Historic Site, established in 1936 and (despite considerable updating in recent years) devoted to the “heroic” interpretation of the missionary encounter; Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, established by the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla tribes and where the Whitmans are presented as dangerous invaders and cultural imperialists; and Nez Perce National Historical Park, established in 1965 in a partnership between the National Park Service and the Nez Perce and other native peoples where the death of the Whitmans is presented in a more even-handed manner. I will briefly examine other public monuments to the Whitmans including sites such as Whitman College and the Marcus Whitman Hotel.

The presentation will be incorporate many images, sound clips, and video from the sites examined.

WallaWallaHistory.com

I am charmed by the amateur enthusiasm of this site, WallaWallaHistory.org. Living up to its billing as "A Virtual Museum Preserving Walla Walla's Legacy" the site reminds me so much of little town and county museums scattered across the west. It features historic photos of Walla Walla, maps, the odd historic newspaper article, and a section called "Vanishing Walla Walla" that juxtaposes photos of decaying and demolished historic buildings with the strip development monstrosities that have replaced them. This is how amateur local history should be done, with a passion for place, careful research and a bit of whimsy.

The site also includes a enchanting (and extensive!) series of before and after pictures. I like this set. The ladies in the turn-of-the-century postcard on the left look so very proud as they stand beside the little fountain. The background is the treeless bleakness of large swaths of the Inland Northwest as it appeared it the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Presumably these ladies had something to do with the establishment of the fountain and the park, their efforts expressed an optimism in the future of their community and a desire to leave a legacy for future generations. The modern photograph of the same fountain to the right is profoundly satisfying--the fountain appears well-maintained these hundred years, the trees have grown up and benches allow visitors to enjoy the shade, and children frolic in the water, just as in the original photograph a century before.

Hey--I see that the site also offers careful reproductions of historic postcards and a calendar of historic photos of Walla Walla. I am going to buy one for an old friend from Walla Walla.