Columbia's 25th Anniversary

In 2011, COLUMBIA: The Magazine of Northwest History celebrates its 25th year of publication. Throughout the two and a half decades of its existence, the magazine’s staff has striven to maintain the character and quality of the publication John M. McClelland Jr. (1915–2010) brought into being during his tenure on the Washington State Historical Society Board of Trustees.

COLUMBIA should leave intellectual history to the scholarly journals, concentrating instead on narrative history, interpretation of events, and accounts of human achievements and happenings in all areas of endeavor to provide knowledge of what has brought Washington and its people to their present condition.

- John M. McClelland, Jr.

Recently the magazine has taken a few baby steps into the digital realm. The print
version of the magazine is not going away, but a digital edition of the Spring 2011
issue is available for a limited time as a PDF file downloadable from our Web site:
Columbia.WashingtonHistory.org.

COLUMBIA is one element of McClelland’s cultural legacy that every person in Washington can benefit by. Executive editor and Historical Society director David Nicandri’s eulogy for John McClelland appears on page 2 of the new spring issue.

Pictures of Resistance

This came across my desk this morning and it looks fascinating: The Holocaust Center is partnering with Hillel at the University of Washington to bring to Seattle “Pictures of Resistance: The Wartime Photography of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman” featuring photography from the only known Jewish partisan photographer during the Holocaust.

Remember Daniel Craig in the movie “Defiance”? He played Tuvia Bielski, the commander of the Bielski Partisan group. Tuvia’s granddaughter, Sharon Rennert, will be in Seattle sharing personal stories and footage from her upcoming documentary.

PICTURES OF RESISTANCE: The Wartime Photographs of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman
Exhibit - January 13 -February 17, 2011
Teacher Workshop - January 14
Hillel, University of Washington, Seattle
Sponsored by the Holocaust Center in partnership with Hillel
More information – www.wsherc.org/programs.

Special Guest! January 13 & 14
Sharon Rennert, granddaughter of Jewish partisan commander Tuvia Bielski.

TEACHER WORKSHOP - January 14, 2011. 8:30am - 3:00pm.
Presentations by: Mitch Braff, "Women in the Partisans," and Sharon Rennert, "In Our Hands: A Personal Story of the Bielski Partisans." Clock hours available. $10 registration fee. Space is limited – More info and to register – www.wsherc.org/programs.

Please note: the Historical Society is not affiliated with this event--we're just spreading the word! The image featured on this post is courtesy of the Washington Holocaust Education Resource Center.

Free Movie Night: “Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian”

Take an entertaining trip through the evolution of North American Native People (“The Indians”) as portrayed in famous Hollywood movies from the silent era to today. Jim Jarmusch, Clint Eastwood, Graham Greene, John Trudell and others provide insights into the often demanding and occasionally hilariously absurd stereotypes perpetuated on the big screen through Hollywood’s history.

Date: Thursday, October 21, 2010
Time: 6:00 PM
Price: Free Third Thursday Program
Where: Washington State History Museum (Auditorium), 1911 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma 98402

"Reel Injun" traces the evolution of cinema's depiction of Native people from the silent film era to today, with clips from hundreds of classic and recent Hollywood movies, and candid interviews with celebrated Native and non-Native film celebrities, activists, film critics, and historians.

Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond meets with Clint Eastwood at his studios in California, where the film legend discusses the evolution of the image of Indians in Westerns and what cowboy-and-Indian myths mean to America. Reel Injun also hears from legendary Native American activists John Trudell, Russell Means, and Sacheen Littlefeather.

Diamond takes the audience on a journey across America to some of cinema's most iconic landscapes, including Monument Valley, the setting for Hollywood's greatest Westerns, and the Black Hills of South Dakota, home to Crazy Horse and countless movie legends. It's a loving look at cinema through the eyes of the people who appeared in its very first flickering images and have survived to tell their stories their own way.

The Washington State Historical Society joins with Independent Television Service in presenting this Community Cinema Tacoma offering.

Community Cinema is a groundbreaking public education and civic engagement initiative featuring free monthly screenings of films from the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens. Community Cinema is on location in more than 60 cities nationally, bringing together leading organizations, community members and public television stations to learn, discuss, and get involved in key social issues of our time. The film screening will be followed by a lively panel discussion with local students, performers and community members.

Image above courtesy of ITVS.

The White Monster of 1910

(If you're coming from Facebook, to see this story in its entirety, click here.)


One of the greatest disasters in American history is also one of Washington's little-known stories. We're in the process of organizing our museum theater program, Ghosts of the Great Hall, and this tale was one of the first that we told.

On February 23, 1910, two Great Northern trains- the Spokane Local, and the Fast Mail train – were stranded at the Wellington Depot in the midst of the worst snowstorm ever seen in the Cascade Mountains. Day after day, the fearful passengers were unable to escape the mountain despite the heroic efforts of the railroad crews to clear the tracks.

In the early morning on the seventh day, a massive avalanche roared down the mountain slope, sweeping both trains off the tracks and into the canyon below.
Of the 125 people sleeping in the cars at the time of the avalanche, 99 were killed, making the Wellington Disaster the most deadly avalanche in America – a record that still stands today.

The History Museum is fortunate to have many of those images in our collections, many of which can be found online. When we uncovered these images, we wanted to share this story.

And so we invite you to listen to our COLUMBIAKids radio program, "The White Monster of 1910," and discover the rest for yourself:

http://columbia.washingtonhistory.org/kids/fall2009/podpuzzle.aspx

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IMAGE: Two locomotives in the snow after the trains were swept down Windy Mountain at Wellington, Washington on March 1, 1910. 1943.42.17461. Washington State Historical Society Collections. To view in its entirety, click here.

Women Unbound: Celebrate the Legacy

If you're a blog reader, you may or may not know that the Washington State Historical Society is doing a lot to celebrate the suffrage centennial through our Washington Women's History Consortium. We were sent an email recently about a cool opportunity to celebrate women's history and just thought that we'd pass it along.

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100 years ago, something happened that changed our lives forever....

It's time to celebrate! On November 8th, 1910, women in Washington State were awarded the right to vote. One hundred years later, the Women's Center at the University of Washington is ready to celebrate this incredible accomplishment, as well as one hundred women in our state who have broken barriers in a variety of industries.

Please join them for WOMEN UNBOUND: CELEBRATE THE LEGACY. One hundred Washington women – pioneers in their fields or careers - and our priceless heritage will be honored at a gala at the Seattle Sheraton. Sponsored by the U.W. Women’s Center.

For more information on this event, visit the website at http://depts.washington.edu/womenctr/ or call 206-685-1090. Please note: the Historical Society is not affiliated with this event--we're just spreading the word!

Oregon Trail - The Movie

One of the things I often wonder as I sit at my computer is how many other people received their first introduction to Pacific Northwest History in the form of the old Oregon Trail computer game. I recall being taken to the computer lab in second grade specifically to play it. We learned about purchasing supplies, caulking covered wagons, and losing family members to just about every disease ever encountered in the 1800s.

And now, someone’s made a mock movie trailer:



Am I the only one who wishes this was a real movie?

"Doing" History

Every once in a while, something really wonderful crosses my desk and this blog post by Kimberly Voss was one of those things.  In it, she explains how she was able to discover the story about journalist Bobbi McCallum in order to write the article featured in an issue of COLUMBIA magazine.  You can check it out online at our website. 

As Kimberly said in her post: "Often, as scholars, we focus on the results -- what it is we found.  This is the story of how I got to the results."