Small Towns Getting Smaller--and Maybe That is OK

My local paper, the Spokesman-Review, has an interesting article this morning: Small Towns Keep Getting Smaller:

Even as the state and its larger cities bustle with more people, more business – more everything, it seems – the small towns dotting Eastern Washington are emptying.

“It’s a shame,” said Whitman County Commissioner Patrick O’Neill. “My opinion is that the small towns of America are what made this country great.”

Small towns began dying about a century ago. They had sprouted to serve the influx of farmers, loggers, ranchers, miners, railroads and travelers. In Eastern Washington they sit about 25 miles apart, a reasonable distance for a horse and rider to cover in a day.

Saint Andrews, WA

Then tractors and new plows, bigger farms and the automobile ushered in change. The 1910 census was the last to count more rural Americans than city dwellers.

The article was inspired by the release of the 2010 Census figures and we can expect a similar set of stories from other parts of rural America, where the same forces are at work. Rural depopulation is a worldwide phenomena and more than a century old. Newspaper reports like that in the Spokesman usually focus on the "push" factors that cause people to leave rural communities--the rise of mechanized corporate farming, loss of opportunities and services in rural communities, improved transportation. I wonder though if the "pull" factors in the cities don't deserve more attention--not just jobs and education but infrastructure (Spokane got electricity more than a generation before most rural areas), culture and entertainment, and less pressure to conform than one finds in a small rural community.

One Room school  west of Waverly, WA

A few years back our summer vacation was a camping journey along the Lewis and Clark Trail. Trying to follow the Missouri River across the northern plains took us off the beaten path and through Ground Zero of rural depopulation (see also this map). We went through so many ghost-towns-in-the-making, places where a small band of hanger-on lived within the decaying shell of a once-larger community. Often the office was the only public service that remained (since the post office doesn't have to make money), sometimes a tavern would sit next to the post office, there might even be a gas station. A story I read in a North Dakota newspaper on that trip told about the closing of another rural school. The previous year it had had one student, a sixth-grader. At recess he would climb the one tree in the playground and daydream, one supposes about moving.

Rural depopulation is always presented as a tragedy in these stories and I suppose it is. Yet the story can also be told as a triumph, a story of human adaptability and innovation and eagerness to improve. After all it is the same set of values--a willingness to embrace risk, the desire of a better life, wanting to provide opportunities for one's children--that both brought people to the rural areas and takes them away.

[St. Andrews photograph from Panoramio user Chris Metz. I took the school photo a few years ago.]

"The Heritage Hatchet" in Washington State

A useful and chilling post over at the Seattle blog Crosscut highlights another blow to history and heritage in the draconian state budget just proposed by Governor Gregoire. The Heritage Capitol Projects fund is to be eliminated, cutting $10 million from state heritage organizations and ending a program that since 1997 has helped fund historic preservation in the state. Crosscut lays out the impact of the decision:

So, the Seattle Theater Group will not get money for improvements to the historic Moore Theater ($531,259); the Museum of History and Industry will not get funds to fix plumbing and ventilation in its new museum space ($1 million), the Seattle Department of Transportation won't get additional funds for restoring King Street Station ($700,000), the Phinney Neighborhood Association won't receive a grant to renovate its historic community center ($994,950), SAM won't get help with new storage space for its collection ($30,890), the Center for Wooden Boats will miss out on money to build its new education center at South Lake Union park ($1,000,000), and Historic Seattle will lose restoration funds for the landmark Washington Hall in the Central District ($470,000).

And the list goes on for projects all over the state: the ship Lady Washington in Gray's Harbor, Tacoma's historic granary at Fort Nisqually, the Officer's Row housing at Ft. Vancouver, the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, the Blue Mountain Heritage Society's Smith Hollow School, the Maryhill Museum near Goldendale, Snoqualmie's railway museum, these and many more will lose out under the current plan.

The actual impact is greater than $10 million because the grants required $2 in matching funds for every state dollar.

As the details of this budget emerge it is clear that we are facing a disaster of historic proportions as the state walks away from maintaining its history and heritage and decides that these are no longer a function of government. Among the other monumental decisions in the budget:

• Shut down both the Eastern and the Western Washington State Historical Societies.

• Cut all state funding for the parks, many of which are historic parks. The parks will have to sink or swim with whatever recreational and camping fees they can generate (including $5 or $10 to visit a state park), and it is anticipated that many will simply close. Goodbye, Spokane House.

• Slashing the budget of the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation and merging the agency with the Department of Natural Resources.

• Eliminate other statewide historic programs including Barn Again, which helps owners identify and maintain the historic barns that define many of our rural areas.

• Eliminate the Washington State Arts Commission.

What remains for history and heritage in the state budget? Not much. Though the budget will be cut, the Secretary of State will continue to maintain public records (as required the state constitution) many of which are historic through the state archives. (Full disclosure: I have a half-time appointment with the Washington State Archives.) The Washington State Library will take big cuts but it seems likely it will remain open in some form. Although the Archives and Library preserve historic records, neither offers extensive historical interpretation and outreach like the state historic societies and parks.

We are at a crossroads in Washington State. If we travel down the road the governor has outlined we face a future without a past. Admittedly she has only poor choices--the state budget must be balanced, and voters overturned even a small tax increase on soda pop in the recent elections. And yet there are other places that could be cut in a budget that still includes money for golf courses, state prisons crowded with non-violent offenders, and various big-ticket roads and building projects that, while necessary, could be delayed until the economy improves. The governor's constant refrain, that her only choices are to cut history (or whichever cut she is defending) or eliminate vaccines for poor children is simply not the case.

Please take a moment, right now, to contact your state representatives and protest these cuts. This post on the proposed MAC closure has links and details on how to do so.

Save the MAC!

Those of you in Spokane may already know that in her proposed 2011-2013 budget Governor Gregoire has proposed closing the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture. The doors would be closed and the staff would be reduced from 34.8 to 2.8 full-time equivalents--basically someone to mow the lawn. The museum exhibits and the Campbell House would close, the cultural events would end, and the public would lose access to the historic records and collections that the museum holds. The Washington State Historical Society in Tacoma is to get the same treatment. For the historical community in Washington State this is an unprecedented disaster in the making.

State Budget vs. the MAC

The attached statement and supporting documents from the MAC Museum board president relate to the Governor’s budget made public today. Her budget has plans to close the Museum to the public.
How can you help?

     1. Contact your elected officials and tell them how important the MAC is to you and this community.

     2. Contact five of your friends and ask them to do the same.

     3. Become a member of the MAC!  

Let your representatives know how important the MAC is to our region and, for the preservation of historical and cultural treasures that can be found nowhere else.

This is just the first step in the budget process. Our legislative delegation has been extremely supportive, and we are working closely with them.  If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call.

We are moving full-steam ahead in anticipation of da Vinci exhibit opening on June 3, 2011.  Best wishes for a happy holiday season.

Chris Schnug, Museum Board President

509-363-5336

• Statement from the Board
• Elected Official Information
• MAC Facts

Online Resources at the Washington State Historical Society

I began working on a post about the new Columbia magazine website, but along the way found a treasure trove of other history resources at the Washington State Historical Society. So I will begin with the magazine and branch out from there.

I see that Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, the journal of the Washington State Historical Society, has a new and improved website. Those of you who are familiar with Columbia know that it is a superb journal of popular history, with articles and book reviews that present recent scholarship to a popular audience. The website does not contain everything that has appeared in the journal but many of the articles are available in full text. (This article is excellent.)

There are many other online resources available from the WSHS, including lesson plans, featured collections, women's history resources, and information about visiting the WSHS locations in Tacoma and Olympia. The featured collections is an especially rich resource, and includes digital collections of maps, American Indian Photographs, Columbia River Photographs, a Gustav Sohon Collection, and a Sheet Music Collection. The collections are very much oriented to the west side of the state (a search for "Spokane"  results in zero hits!) and are presented in ContentDM. But within these restrictions there tremendous things to be found at the WSHS site.

An Interesting Graduate Student Project

One of my graduate students, Shaun Reeser, is working to recover a long-lost government website for his MA public history project. Specifically, he will be working with some of the staff at the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives to recover the website of Ralph Munro, who served five terms as Washington Secretary of State from 1981 to 2001. Munro launched the first website for the Secretary of State's office in 1996, and the site was regularly updated until he left office in 2001. How to bring it back?

The Digital Archives has done something like this before, when we preserved the website of Washington Governor Gary Locke. In that 2005 effort the DA staff raced the clock to migrate Locke's website (an important public record) to the DA before it was taken down to make way for the website of Governor Gregoire. It was a pioneering project, but what Reeser will try to do is different. Munro's website was preserved in several versions at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. But simply pulling the information off the Wayback Machine is not sufficient for establishing archival authenticity. And the versions of the website at the Wayback Machine are often incomplete, lacking some of the original images, for instance, and full of broken links.

Right now Reeser is trying to hunt down the original digital files and to interview Munro and members of his staff. He is also studying other efforts to spider and preserve government websites as historic documents. Does anyone know of similar effort that we should study?

[Image: Oh come on, you know.]

How Screwed Are We?

On a non-historical note, but of interest to anyone who works (as I do) for the State of Washington: Governor Christine Gregoire today issued The 2009-11 Budget Story [PDF]. The short version: We in Washington State have lost $9 billion in expected revenue in a state budget of $31 billion. Even after wrenching cuts this year, we face a shortfall of another $1.7 billion, which has to come out of the $9.3 billion portion of the budget that is not "protected" by federal requirements or contracts or such. Sample graphic:

Pretty screwed.

The Historical Treasure-Trove that is the UW Libraries Digital Collections

The University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections "features materials such as photographs, maps, newspapers, posters, reports and other media from the University of Washington Libraries, University of Washington Faculty and Departments, and organizations that have participated in partner projects with the UW Libraries. The collections emphasize rare and unique materials."

There are a lot of useful resources here--check out the Special Collections section for seventy-five wonderful digitized collections such as Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition Photographs, Centralia Massacre and the Industrial Workers of the World Collection, 1912-1932, and the Vietnam War Era Ephemera Collection (from which the John Wayne poster featured here is taken.)

Good collections descriptions accompany all the collections and some have considerable additional material. American Indians of the Pacific Northwest, for example, has introductory essays, maps, and "bibliographies and links to related text and images as well as study questions that K-12 teachers may use as they develop curricula in their schools." They also have a blog to help users keep up-to-date with changes in their digital collections.

As wonderful as the site is, it could be more interactive. The images are difficult to download and save (which may be a feature rather than a bug!) and there is no Web 2.0 interaction. There is not even a way for users to flag an image that is obviously misidentified.

(Image: Cropped detail from John Wayne in No Substitute for Victory, created by the "Greater Seattle TRAIN Committee (To Restore American Independence Now)" and "Students for Victory in Viet Nam, Seattle Committee.")

Ye Olde Pandemic Roundup

I just wanted to point out this great roundup of materials relating to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic at the AHA Today blog. The post includes primary sources, pictures, video and lesson plans.

Here is Washington State we too are doing our part to promote swine flu hysteria historical understanding with an outstanding front page article at HistoryLink.org ("the free, online encyclopedia of Washington State history"). Also at HistoryLink.org see "The Spanish Flu in Spokane." My friend and colleague Bill Youngs has a website with some interesting newspaper articles on the flu in Spokane as well. The United States Department of Health and Human Services has a website titled "The Great Pandemic: The United States in 1918-1919" which features a section on Washington State.

A search through Google Books with the keywords "spokane" "influenza" and "1918" turns up a bunch of good stuff, including this 1918 report from a labor union organizer about the difficulties of organizing when public meetings are prohibited because of the flu.

Cover your mouths when you sneeze, readers!

[Photo: Street car conductor in Seattle not allowing passengers aboard without a mask. 1918. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.]

The Sad Story of the Washington State Song

Over at Civil War Memory Kevin and the gang have been having sport with the controversy over the Maryland state song. It turns out that the song was written by Confederate sympathizers and denounces Lincoln as a tyrant. Several commenters pointed to other state mottoes with racist or other unfortunate content. So I started researching the Washington State song hoping to get in on the fun. Check this out:



Yes, Louie Louie could have been our state song!

This page has a thumbnail history of the 1985 effort to make Louie Louie our official state song:

Meanwhile, in the state of Washington, more impetus was brewing to push the history of 'Louie Louie' from the unusual to the implausible. Resolution No. 85-12 to the Legislature of the State of Washington by Whatcom County Commissioner Craig Cole called for 'Louie Louie' to be proclaimed the official state song. Citing Washington's need for a 'contemporary theme song that can be used to engender a sense of pride and community, and in the enhancement of tourism and economic development', Cole's resolution 'respectfully memorializes the Washington State Legislature to proclaim 'Louie Louie' as the official state song', and to name a newly created county 'Louie Louie County'.

Louie Louie is a sentimental favorite in Washington, where a Seattle band called The Wailers made it popular in the 1960s. (Here is a video of Wailers front man Jack Ely singing the song to horse.) The state instead declared a Louie Louie Day, stating among other things:

WHEREAS, Few of our citizens are aware that there is an official theme song; and
WHEREAS, Even fewer of our citizens know the words or could carry the tune ...

So the legislature ducked the issue. But why was there a movement to change the song at all? Because the exisiting state song sounds like it was written by a committee of Girl Scouts:

Washington, My Home
Written by Helen Davis
Arranged by Stuart Churchill

This is my country; God gave it to me;
I will protect it, ever keep it free.
Small towns and cities rest here in the sun,
Filled with our laughter, 'Thy will be done.'

Washington my home;
Where ever I may roam;
This is my land, my native land,
Washington, my home.
Our verdant forest green,
Caressed by silvery stream;
From mountain peak to fields of wheat.
Washington, my home.

There's peace you feel and understand
In this, our own beloved land.
We greet the day with head held high,
And forward ever is our cry.
We'll happy ever be
As people always free.
For you and me a destiny;
Washington my home."

It sounds worse than is scans--try the MP3.

Perhaps the time has come to renew the effort to change the song to Louis Louie?

Classics in Washington History, Part 2

12th Session of the Washington State Legislature by the artist Alfred T. Renfro is one of the more endearing volumes in the Classics in Washington History digital collection (which I began exploring yesterday).

Renfro was a well-known commercial artist in turn-of-the-century Seattle. He was an architect as well as an artist, active in the Arts and Crafts movement and an important figure in creating the artists colony of Beaux Arts Village. (The massive timbers used in Craftsman style construction, Renfro noted, were "a good influence on the children.") His book, The Twelfth Session of the Washington State Legislature and State Official Caricatured by Alfred T. Renfro, is a set of humorous drawings and thumbnail biographies of the members of the Washington State House and Senate during the 12th session, from 1910-11. "I hope no one will be offended by anything which appears in this
book," Renfro writes, "We assure you no offense Is meant. Everything is given in good part and we hope It will be taken the same way."

The politicians are described in mildly colorful, mildly humorous ways. "Senator H. O. Fishback," we learn, "is the 'biggest man who ever sat in the senate,' for he weighs over the 300 pound mark. The big senator was chairman of the big committee on Roads and Bridges and was a member of ten other committees, but he is equal to the task. Even his enemies, if he has any, will tell you that he is an honest, sincere and capable man." Below we see the voluminous Fishback:

Each caricature follows the same format--jocular description, a head draw like a portrait, and the rest of the drawing a caricature of the individual. There are always some additional items in the drawing. For Fishback it is the "How Fat is He?" side and rear profiles, and also the cartoon cat (apparently a play on the fish in Fishback).


But we get ahead of ourselves. The first portrait in the volume is of Washington Governor Marion E. Hay (1909-1913), who Renfro portrays as a penny-pinching public servant:

The motto on the wall reads "Give the taxpayer a dollar's worth in return for every dollar they pay." In the lower corner a small figure (who Renfro dubs "my little friend Si Wash") mutters "No easy jobs around here now," as he carries a message to the legislature. Hays was an accidental governor who assumed the office on the untimely death of his successor and whose one term was marked by vigorous anti-corruption efforts.

And here, after the jump, are some more of my favorites from this collection:

"Fighting Dick" Hutchinson:



Puppet Master and Speaker of the House Howard Taylor:



This portrait of Yakima County representative Walter Moren has an interesting load of cultural baggage attached. Since Moran was southern born, Renfro makes him a colonel, and provides as backdrop a southern belle and a stereotyped black servant with a tray of mint juleps. Renfro even provides a poem in mock "darkie" dialect:

He was born in o1' Kentuck 'neath a bright and lucky star,
And of course he is a Kurnel and a member of de bar.
He's a jedge of good mint julips, in de land of tall blue grass,
Where dey grows de blooded horses and de women you can't surpass.



Perhaps the most curious portrait is of Representative William M. Beach of Mason County, dancing in somehow effeminate Indian outfit. Renfro notes that Beach comes from the "only squaw county in the state." I have no idea what "squaw county" was meant to imply, but they sure liked to dance:



Next post: The genial racism of Renfro.

Great Washington History Resource from the State Library

This is the first in a series of posts exploring a fantastic resource: Classics in Washington History. This digital collection from the Washington State Library is "brings together rare, out of print titles for easy access by students, teachers, genealogists and historians." This treasure trove of over 100 books and documents includes a lot of classics in Northwest History, including Army Life on the Pacific by Lawrence Kip, Folk-tales of Salishan and Sahaptin tribes by Franz Boas, and Ka-mi-akin, the last hero of the Yakimas by A. J. Splawn.

All of the above titles are also available full-text in Google Books, which is a superior format to the DjVu browser plug in that the Washington State Library employs. (I will write more on this subject later this week.) However, many of the classics are available no where else online and are real gems for doing local and regional history. The Deposition of Ranald McDonald is one example. McDonald was the son of a Scottish Hudson's Bay Company fur trader and a Chinook mother. In 1848 he purposely had himself stranded on the coasts of Japan, then a closed kingdom cut off from the rest of the world. His deposition is an invaluable source for both northwest and Japanese history, and the library also has MacDonald's autobiography online. The picture on the right is a monument to MacDonald in Nagasaki, Japan. He lies buried in obscure corner of Ferry County. Some other gems of Washington history include 12th Session of the Washington State Legislature, a delightful set of caricatures of early Washington leaders by the artist Alfred T. Renfro, and Annals of old Angeline : "Mika Yahoos delate klosch!" by Venen, Bertha Piper.

I am trying something new on the Northwest History blog this week, each day I will explore a different book or issue related to this site. Tomorrow: Amusing drawings of politicians. Let's see how it works!

Indians and Law in Territorial Washington

As Americans established control of what was Washington Territory in the 1850s, what legal status was provided for the American Indians?

I was searching today to see if the laws of the State of Washington are online. What I found were bits and pieces, not a comprehensive legal record but some valuable information. One treasure is the Laws of Washington, Volume 1, 1854-1862. This is part of the Classics in Washington History online collection provided by the State Library. "This digital collection of full-text books brings together rare, out of print titles for easy access by students, teachers, genealogists and historians," and will be the subject of future posts here. Today, I did a keyword search for "Indians" through this collection of early laws and got some fascinating results.

This 1854 law lists persons "not competent to testify" in the civil actions:

Later on the laws specify who may testify in criminal matters, and here there is more leeway for Indians to speak: "Witnesses competent to testify in civil cases shall be competent in criminal prosecutions, but regular physicians or surgeons, clergymen or .priests, shall not be protected from testifying as to confessions, or information received from any defendant, by virtue of their profession and character; Indians shall be competent witnesses as hereinbefore provided, or in any prosecutions in which an Indian may be a defendant. " (302)

On the other hand the laws specify that "the property of all Indians" is exempt from taxes (p. 526) and a law governing the construction of wharves and regulation of watercraft emphasizes that "No part of this act shall be construed as applying to Indians, or to the property of Indians." (p. 556)

An 1854 "Act to Regulate Marriage" declares "That all marriages hereafter solemnized in this Territory, where one of the parties to such marriage shall be a white person, and the other possessed of one-fourth or more of negro blood, or more than one-half Indian blood, are hereby declared void." Any official who married such a couple was subject to a fine of between 50 and 500 dollars, to be paid to the common schools. In an apparent afterthought, Section 3 of the law states that "nothing in this act shall be so construed as to prevent any parties from being united in marriage, who may be living together at the time of the passage of this act." (651-52) This seems designed to allow established mixed race couples, who had perhaps been married for years in the Indian fashion and had children together, to legalize their ties.

An act authorizing county assessors to take the census directs them to "make separate lists of all taxable half breed Indians, negroes, kanaka [Hawaiians -ed.], and mulatoes, and chinamen" in their counties. (704)

Overall the laws paint a picture of white Washingtonians as eager to define citizenship in racial terms with a limited place for American Indians.

Washington State Library :: Washington Rural Heritage

Washington Rural Heritage: "Washington Rural Heritage (WRH) is an online aggregation of special collections from small and rural communities throughout the state of Washington." This site from the Washington State Library features "photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, oral histories, and more." The idea is that the state library will help small communities put some of their historic collections online.

So far the site consists of the Ritzville Heritage and Whitman County Heritage collections. The photograph above, of a 1948 parade in Tekoa, Washington is from the latter collection.

This is an important initiative from the Secretary of State--enabling obscure local history sources online as part of a larger searchable database. It will be interesting to watch the site grow as additional communities join in.