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Private Notes
2008 is the 75th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Today its work is still enjoyed in parks and forests around the state. Through interviews with former enrollees, and historic film and pictures, the program tells the story of the CCC in Oregon.
Five days after his 1933 inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called an emergency session of Congress to install one of his most popular New Deal programs – the Conservation Civilian Corps. It was known as the CCC.
The program targeted unemployed young men, veterans and American Indians hard hit by the Great Depression. The CCC boys, as they were called, were required to send a portion of their wages home to their parents. The boys also received free education, healthcare and job training.
Throughout its nine-year existence, the program put millions to work on federal and state land for the ‘prevention of forest fires, floods, and soil erosion, plant, pest, and disease control.’ Nationwide, enrollees planted three billion trees and came to be known as the Tree Army.
Oregon hosted dozens of CCC camps all over the state. Enrollees fought fires on the Tillamook Burns, helped build ski areas on Mt Hood, built telephone and electrical wires, and improved farm lands.
Today, Oregonians continue to enjoy the CCC legacy at parks and forests around the state.
The beauty and magic of the Columbia River Gorge has attracted photographers for more than 150 years. The River They Saw chronicles the history of the Gorge with rarely seen images crafted by Carleton Watkins, Sarah Ladd, Benjamin Gifford, Al Monner and many others. These early photographers left a stunning visual legacy through images still considered among the greatest landscape photos ever made.
The Lewis & Clark Expedition was a pivotal moment in American history. But the story of York, a slave to William Clark and comrade on this journey, has been obscured by omission and stereotype. Searching for York paints a portrait of this unofficial member of the Corps of Discovery as it discusses the ways in which history is written.
In 1923, a Missouri lumber company built a town in northeastern Oregon named Maxville. Hundreds of loggers left Arkansas and Mississippi to live and work there. Many brought their families, and many were African Americans. While the town has long since disappeared, the Maxville story is still unfolding. The Logger’s Daughter follows Gwen Trice, an African-American woman who was born and raised in Eastern Oregon, as she sets out to explore her family’s past.
Large timber harvests require many workers. Logging camps were once common in the Oregon woods. But few of those camps housed whole families. Maxville did, and that fact alone made the town distinctive.
Maxville was built in 1923, almost overnight, by the Bowman-Hicks Lumber Company near Wallowa in eastern Oregon. The Maxville workers came mostly from the deep South, recruited by the company from its operations in Arkansass and Mississippi. But what made Maxville unique was that 50 to 60 of its citizens were African-American. It was home to the only segregated school in Oregon. Maxville’s black residents lived in a group of houses across the tracks from the white residents. Yet the local lore says that conflicts across racial lines were few and friendships many.
Maxville was officially closed in the early 1930s, though a few loggers and their families stayed on for another dozen years. Altogether, most of what happened there during the town’s short existence is not well-known.
A black woman from La Grande, Gwen Trice, never knew much about her father’s early years in Oregon. She only recently learned that he had left Arkansas in the 1920s with his father to live and work in this place called Maxville.
A couple of years ago, Gwen set out with a tape recorder and a video camera to learn more about Maxville. Yet her gathering of oral histories took some unexpected turns as she became immersed in a much wider community. The Logger’s Daughter portrays the story of that community, its
In 1859, Oregon became the 33rd state in the Union. Road to Statehood celebrates Oregon’s 150th birthday by exploring the lives of Native peoples already living here, the mountain men and fur trappers who came for adventure and wealth, and the pioneers who brought their hopes and prejudices with them over the Oregon Trail.
In the late 1800s, thousands of Chinese miners came to Eastern Oregon in search of gold. Among them were two men - Ing “Doc” Hay and Lung On - who opened a store and herbal apothecary called Kam Wah Chung. Though originally catering to their fellow Chinese, over time these two men attended to the medical needs of many, becoming highly regarded members of the community.
The discovery of gold brought thousands of Chinese to eastern Oregon in the late 1880s – including herbal doctor Ing Hay and businessman Lung On. These two men practiced medicine and operated a general store at Kam Wah Chung & Co. in John Day for more than sixty years.
You’ll meet people from the region who remember the two men, explore the history of the Chinese who helped build the West and visit Kam Wah Chung – The Golden Flower of Prosperity.
Today the recently restored building is an Oregon treasure – and a National Historic Landmark filled with thousands of herbs, artifacts and the memories of two men who called it home.
From Razor clam souffle’ to her famous currant teacakes — Mary Beard loved to cook, and always with the freshest seasonal ingredients. Her son James embraced his mother’s passion for food. And even as the proclaimed “dean of American cookery” later moved away and traveled the world, James Beard would forever champion Oregon as a food-lover’s paradise.
Today, good food has become a movement. “Fresh and local” is the mantra of cooks throughout the Pacific Northwest. Yet many have forgotten the name of the man, the native Oregonian, who may have started it all: James Beard.
From an early age, he had a passion for good food. During his life, Beard authored 22 cookbooks, wrote a long-running newspaper column and hosted the first-ever television cooking show. He preached a message of quality ingredients, simply prepared. And he would change the way Americans think about food.
Beard was born in Portland in 1903 and lived his first twenty-plus years in Oregon, spending summers on the coast in Gearhart. Throughout his life, Beard had a gift: an extremely good sense of taste. He could remember flavors much like a person with a photographic memory recalls images. Fortunately for him, he grew up in a world of excellent food.
His mother was an accomplished cook and used only the finest, freshest ingredients, bought from the farmers who grew it. Good local seafood was plentiful in Portland, as well. And between her and the family’s Chinese cook, the Beard home served some of the best meals in town.
Beard lived most of his adult life in New York City where people in the food world proclaimed him “the dean of American cookery.” Yet Beard forever championed Oregon as a food-lover’s paradise.
James Beard passed away in 1985 and his ashes were scattered in the ocean off Gearhart. Looking back, his friend Julia Child summed up his contributions to the food world: “In the beginning, was Beard.”
