By Kelly Sanderbeck, Donor Development Manager
At the time the trifecta moon passed through our lives, I got to do the three things I love most about my job all in one day — spend time with a donor, visit a park ranger to learn about a project we’ve funded, and explore a bit in our beloved mountains. The idea started when I was talking to a donor (who wants to remain anonymous, so I’ll call him Jim!) about the results of his gift for the Film Digitization Project at Olympic National Park. This project would take old photos and videos — sitting on shelves since the 1950s — archive them, and put them in digital format. Not only was the safe storage issue solved, but they would eventually be accessible to an online audience at any point for research and enjoyment.
About six months into the project, I got a report from the ranger in charge (Matt Dubeau, Museum Curator and Research Coordinator) and passed it on to Jim. Matt expressed so much excitement and pride in his work that I thought an in-person visit might be appropriate. Nothing makes what we do here at the Fund more real than hearing directly from the folks at the parks, as well as seeing the projects when completed. And I thought Jim would feel the same.
We headed out early to park headquarters in Port Angeles, planning for a tour and then lunch. Jim and I met Matt at the unassuming ‘Cultural Resources’ building to begin our tour. Who could have known what was held in that nondescript and modest space! First stop was a temperature and humidity controlled room, approved by the Department of the Interior, that houses over 100 years worth of photos, insect displays, news clips, baskets, tools, art, taxidermy, archaeological finds, an herbarium, fire lookout journals, and boxes of files from research employees who had retired. Much of it was archived and recorded, but Matt definitely has job security — there’s so much left yet to be done! Which became even more important when we learned their department had been shrunk from 7 employees in 2009 to only 2 in 2016.
And material keeps coming — from both donations and discoveries. Knowing what to accept can be one of the most difficult choices for Matt. Who knows what significance these items may hold with time and advancing technology? The relevance of history, after all, often holds more insights with the passage of time. Olympic National Park has over 260 documented archaeological sites, and more are discovered all the time. The park doesn’t do active research, but must test for relics anytime a trail is being repaired or a building site is renovated. When Olympic National Park took on the Elwha River restoration, among the many archaeological sites identified during removal of the Elwha River dams were the remains of a large prehistoric camp formerly submerged in the Lake Mills reservoir. Archaeologists at this site recovered thousands of fragments of flaked stone tools and charred animal remains. Radiocarbon dates from this site indicate that it is over 8000 years old! Another item, found by a hiker in the summer of 1992, was an intact remnant of a woven cedar basket roughly 2000 years old — Matt’s favorite item in the collection.
Trained as an archaeologist, Matt does presentations throughout the community, and also leads tours at the park facility. He works closely with local tribes — and their scientists and archaeologists — to help with identification, specifically of the tools and baskets we viewed. Their age and utility were evident, their beauty and artisanship highly refined. Matt’s expertise is often called for in incident responses for the park service, such as during the Gulf oil spill cleanup and during a lava flow at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
Highlights from the tour included the box of 100-year-old photos from local Fanny Taylor, documenting native peoples and landscapes of the time in stark black and white. My personal favorite was an entire family in their Victorian dress shot outside their Victorian home on the coast. We also saw video clips from the fifties by filmmaker Herb Crisler, part of the digitization project funded by Jim, and learned that some are already being used for educational purposes by the park’s Public Information Office. The footage is even being used to scientifically document the changes in tree canopy coverage, growing patterns of wildflowers, from that time to the present.
Matt, Jim and I carried on more vigorous discussion at lunch, going into esoteric topics like the long-term future of our national parks and what technology may enable them to glean from artifacts in the future. We heard about 3-D models that can show what’s in a cubic square of dirt, before digging is necessary. In fact, says Matt, sometimes it’s better to leave things preserved in the ground.
We talked with Matt about bringing Jim back for another visit, seeing further progress on the project he funded. And Jim expressed interest in volunteering, and Matt tossed out ideas for a possible auction package such as: “You and 3 friends spend the day with Curator Matt Dubeau of Olympic National Park, view the collections and do a visit to one of the park’s archaeological sites. End the day with a picnic lunch and Q&A with park staff!”
Jim and I ended the day with a short hike toward Lake Angeles, stopping only as darkness approached. About a mile in we hit snow and tramped directly under the dripping fog layer, magical light glinting from a low angle in the sky. A man of few, but thoughtful, words, Jim summarized the day: “It was very gratifying to be able to participate in the effort that Matt has underway to preserve this historical material and make it available online so that future generations will know the history of the park and the people who lived in the region.” Consider joining us at this year’s Spring Dinner & Auction on April 7 to meet some of the fantastic people who make all this work possible, and to help ensure our youth have access to these treasured places, its history, its present, and into the future.