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Discussion now available as a forum
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There is a new forum available to discuss our first Preserve America Grant proposal and related topics. Two main differences make the forum format different. It is easy for you to submit comments in the Forum. So far we are not screening comments so it should stay easy for now. The second is that Forum content extends down rather than adding to the top of the stack. If you want to follow a forum discussion, subscribe to the RSS feed and get all comments, updates etc. as an email.
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Latest on the Preserve America Program
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The Preserve America Program has been moving ahead in DC. 20 new communities have been added. Our acceptance has yet to be announced. $5,000,000 in grant monies were awarded in 2007 in 60 grants. The next round of awards will probably come in June. The deadline for those applications was November 1st for recognized Preserve America Communities. So I expect another application deadline in late spring and hope to have an application ready as well as Preserve America Community Status.![]()
At the last meeting I presented an idea centered around Hudson Bay's Fort Colville. It had some merit but left some of the hardest working museums at a disadvantage. I want this next concept to bring us all into the mix with some direct results in creating a sustainable mix of Heritage Tourism and Preservation.
This is the concept as it stands:
Crossroads on the Columbia
The Columbia River as a highway for sturgeon-nosed canoes from the north and dugout canoes to the south opened up to steamboats, wagon roads, railroads, ferries and bridges as white settlers moved in. New communities sprang up where roads crossed, each with its own unique blend of resources, culture and conflicts. Researching the flow of goods and people over and around the flow of the Columbia River will bring together their stories. The construction of Grand Coulee Dam cut off and drowned many of these roads and communities marking the end one era and the beginning of our own. This research project will find the ties that bound these communities together in the past and weave them into a roadmap for heritage tourists to follow in the future.
For over 9000 years, Native People gathered at Kettle Falls on the Columbia to fish, trade, govern and celebrate nature’s bounty. With the arrival of David Thompson and his party in July of 1811, British, Scottish and Eastern Native people brought new transportation, new goods and international trade to this cultural Mecca. The declaration of the International Boundary in 1846 brought more structure and strife to the crossroads as the boundary survey parties, British and American, Chinese miners, homesteaders, military and commercial enterprises pursued their interests, often at the expense of the native Sinixt People.
Each of these groups tried to adapt to the others as best they could. There were good and bad actors on every side. National and civil wars rippled into these far corners. Our museums, private citizens, libraries and living memories hold the lessons of those days. The objective of this grant is to bring those stories into focus and organize the materials we have and the questions that remain around them.
If this concept gives each of us enough room to work and enough focus to combine our efforts, we can move forward quantifying how it will get done. The meeting agenda is full, as usual. Email responses are welcome, especially if you won't be there to represent your organization.