May 2019
Official Newsletter of the Oregon Chapter of the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
President's Corner
The volunteer efforts of our dedicated and talented board members make our chapter’s success possible. They provide leadership which makes our chapter a model for other chapters.
We started the year with a truly outstanding presentation on Oregon’s Spanish Galleon Shipwreck, complete with a beeswax artifact. Our next event was a great evening touring the Oregon Historical Society’s the Oregon Experience and hearing a lecture Native Homelands and Lewis & Clark. After that we had a great day on the Explore More Sternwheeler ride. This is just the beginning of an exciting year with several great upcoming events. I hope you can all make the pizza feed and tour of the Oregon Vault by OHS Director Kerry Tymchuk on May 31. These events don’t just happen—they are a product of selfless volunteers. I appreciate the board members who make all this possible.
Reading the Journals, I often marvel at the daily accomplishments and wonder how the Corps got it all done. Consider Sergeant Patrick Gass’s day on July 31, 1806. He and his party of 12 had just completed the down-river portage of the Great Falls and picked up Lewis, the Field brothers, & Drouillard after their Blackfeet encounter. On that wet and disagreeable morning they loaded their canoes, headed down river, and at 9:00 AM stopped to shoot 15 elk. After taking the skins and the best meat, they proceed on and conducted a “leisurely” hunt killing, skinning, and dressing another 14 deer, two bighorn sheep, and a beaver. They found shelter from the persistent rain by covering the Indian winter lodge frameworks they found with the skins they had just procured. When I canoed that stretch of the Missouri, the farthest I travelled in one day was 25 miles. They did all this and still traveled 70 miles that day!
So when my wife broke her ankle last winter I had to pick up all the duties of running the house, farm, and car. There was just not enough time to get everything done—at times I felt overwhelmed. Then I remembered Patrick Gass and the day he had. This is nothing compared to that day. So if you ever feel too busy and overwhelmed, just remember Patrick Gass on July 31, 1806.
Glen Kirkpatrick
glen9774@mail.com
Natives + Lewis & Clark at OHS — April 2019
on Native Homelands: Lewis & Clark and the Pioneers. The
new Oregon Experience exhibit features substantial interpretation
of Lewis & Clark, along with Expedition-related several artifacts.
Historian and professor Bill Lang and Tamástslikt Cultural Institute director Bobbie Connor shared their perspectives on Oregon history seen from the native point of view.
Chapter members enjoyed a pre-event dinner at the nearby Raven & Rose restaurant (the former Ladd Carriage House) and toured the exhibit.
NASA and LCTHF Team Up — GLOBE Observer
Our national foundation urges us to participate in NASA’s GLOBE Observer program as citizen-scientists like the Corps.As we get outside more frequently this summer and travel the L&C Trail, we can use the downloadable GLOBE Observer phone app to take scientific measurements and provide observations to help better understand our global environment.
The app includes tools to count mosquito larvae, measure the height of trees, and more.
GLOBE observations can help scientists track changes in clouds, water, plants, and other life in support of Earth system science research. Scientists can also use our data to help interpret NASA and other satellite data.
Chapter Activities
Explore More!
& Clark Expedition aboard the Columbia Gorge sternwheeler on
its April 18 repositioning cruise between Cascade Locks and The
Dalles. (L. to R: John Orthmann, Glen Kirkpatrick, Capt. Tom
Cramblett, Thelma Haggenmiller, and Roger Wendlick)
Watch your mail and e-mail, and especially the chapter website for more information and details.
McMenamin’s St. John’s Pub
A movie theatre then and now, it provided many excited fair-goers their first glimpse of a motion picture.
It is now McMenamin’s St. John’s Pub.
Send $10 and your name (as you want it to appear), to Ellie McClure, 17760 S.W. Cheyenne Way, Tualatin, OR 97062 (Ellie.McClure@or-lcthf.org). Make checks payable to OR-LCTHF. (click the picture above to see a larger image.)
2019 Chapter Events
See the Events page for more details if available!
- May 31, 12 / 2 PM: Lunch/ Tour the Oregon Vault in Gresham, the Oregon Historical Society’s state-of-the-art storage facility for Oregon’s artifacts.
Prospects:
- L&C military history in Oregon
- Spirit Mountain Casino and Museum
- Portland L&C campsites and commemorations
- Camp Rilea archaeology
- Ice Age Floods
- Confluence sites
Officers:
President | Glen Kirkpatrick '19 |
| Vice President | Lyn Trainer ’20 |
| Secretary | Mark Johnson '19 |
| Treasurer | Ellie McClure ’20 |
| Directors | Alec Burpee ‘21 David Ellingson ‘20 Thelma Haggenmiller ‘19 Mary Johnson ‘21 Ted Kaye ‘19 Roger Wendlick ‘21 |
| Ex Officio | Jon Burpee Hannah Crummé Larry McClure |
Please contact Glen Kirkpatrick with interest in Chapter service.
New Chapter Board Member
He contributes to the Orbis Cascade Alliance as a member of the Unique and Local Content Team, and Chair of the Archival Collection Management Standing Group.
His work on the history and literature of the Lewis & Clark Expedition center around his position at Lewis & Clark College, where he uses the resources of the Expedition collections to teach and advance research on the legacy of Lewis & Clark.
Sacagawea Featured in Play
“Protect the Water—Remember the Sacrifice.” Written by Mary Kathryn Nagle and directed by Molly Smith, Crossing Mnisose (minne-show-she) “tells the story of one of America's first feminists, Sacajawea, and draws a line from a completely original view of Lewis & Clark to the present day, as descendants of the Dakota and Lakota Nations continue their fight for the Mnisose (what Europeans named the Missouri River) and the lands that contain the burials of their ancestors.”
Beeswax Shipwreck — February 2019
shedding new light on the “Beeswax Shipwreck”
and the cargo that natives traded to Lewis & Clark
“We now know with near certainty that the Santo Cristo de Burgos wrecked on Nehalem Spit in 1693. Cameron La Follette, the Executive Director of the Oregon Coast Alliance and co-author of a special issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly devoted to the shipwreck, gave a special presentation to 25 chapter members and friends at the West Linn Public Library in February. She described the wreck and recent research illuminating it.
The Spanish “Manila galleon” strayed off course en route to Acapulco. Among its many cargo items were tons of beeswax destined for churches in the New World (which had no honeybees). The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition were the first to mention the beeswax on the Oregon Coast. The Oregon Historical Society loaned a chunk for viewing.
