|
Special
Projects
To fulfill its mission - promoting broad public
discussions about Columbia River Basin History and its connection
to the present - the Center for Columbia River History applies
critical historical methodology, engages directly with Columbia
River Basin communities, and through a number of special projects,
creates educational public history products on-line, in print,
and through public educational programs.
Columbia River Basin
Project * Vancouver National
Historic Reserve * National History Day
Post-Doctoral Web Projects
The
Columbia River Basin Project, 1997-2000
The Columbia River Basin Project (CRBP) directs the talents
and expertise of a team of historians, teachers, librarians,
archivists, computer specialists, and educators, to the creation
of an integrated and interdisciplinary electronic library and
learning center built from materials focused on the Columbia
River Basin. The CRBP is funded by a $500,000 three-year grant
from the U.S. Department of Education to the History Department
at Portland State University. Three separate but linked programs
comprise CRBP: The Community History Program; the Oral History
Program; and the Integrated Curriculum program.
CRBP's
Community History Program
The "Columbia Communities" project is an extension
of an earlier National Endowment for the Humanities-funded project
that sought to document diverse community histories throughout
the Columbia River Basin. The demonstration project focused
on Moses Lake, Washington and Sandpoint, Idaho, and worked with
local museums and volunteers to create and exchange exhibits
and public programs. The Moses
Lake and Sandpoint
Web Sites are now available on the CCRH website.
Other community history Web Sites created by CRBP staff include
Camas, Washington, the Columbia
Slough, Cottage
Grove, and Umatilla,
Oregon, and a Columbia
Basin Native Fishery Web Site. Project staff create
"virtual" exhibits presented on the Center's web site.
These are based on historical research and interviews that focus
on community change since the building of the big dams on the
Columbia and its tributaries. The community "exhibits,"
which include many primary documents, photographs, and oral
histories, are designed to reach a wide audience, including
the general public, teachers, and elementary, high school, and
college students.
CRBP's
Oral History Program
The Office of Oral History in the Oregon Historical
Society (OHS) will produce seventy or more interviews in two
projects about the Columbia River Basin. The first project
will focus on groups and individuals who organized and acted
in opposition to or with a different vision of management of
the Columbia River by official agencies such as the Army Corps
of Engineers, Bonneville Power Administration, and U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service. The second focuses on the premier
agency in the review of Columbia River operations--the Northwest
Power Planning Council. OHS staff will interview key individuals
who contributed to the shaping of policies that have had and
continue to have enormous effect on the region. Interviews
will be transcribed and published on the CCRH web site.
CRBP's
Integrated Curriculum Program
This project will develop collated materials about the Columbia
River and make them available for classroom use by creating
an interdisciplinary, integrated, and thematic curriculum on
the Columbia River that can be used in classrooms throughout
the region. The curricula will utilize the teaching disciplines
of mathematics, literature, history, biological and physical
sciences, and art. When completed and tested, it will
provide a model for other integrated curricula using library
materials. The curriculum program will tap the expertise
of interdisciplinary teacher teams from two Columbia River Basin
high schools--Stevenson High School in Stevenson, Washington,
and St. Helens High School in St., Helens, Oregon--who will
plan, implement, and eventually expand course offerings.
The curriculum will be shared between the two schools and will
be posted on the CCRH web site.
CRBP's Post-Doctoral
Web Projects
Two Post-Doctoral Fellows have been integral to the Columbia
Basin Project. From fall, 1997 through winter, 1998, Debra
Sutphen worked on the Community
History Web Site while teaching the Johnson Creek Capstone
course at Portland State University and developing the Women
and Timber Oral History Web Project. From Spring 1999 through
Spring 2000, Katrine Barber
worked on the Community History Web Site, taught two Johnson
Creek Capstones courses, and developed a Celilo
Falls Web Project.
The
Vancouver National Historic Reserve Social History Project,
1999-2005
The Vancouver National Historic Reserve (VNHR) Social History
Project directs the preparation of professionally researched
and written narratives outlining the historical importance of
the Vancouver National Historic Reserve. VNHR, located in Vancouver,
Washington, is a 366-acre historic site reserved by Congress
in 1996. The publicly owned land encompasses a variety of historic,
cultural, and natural resources, including Fort Vancouver National
Historic Site and Vancouver Barracks' Officer's Row. The Historic
Reserve is administered through the cooperation of four partners:
the city of Vancouver, the United States Army, the state of
Washington, and the National Park Service. The Center for Columbia
River History is located on the Historic Reserve at the O.O.
Howard House on Officer's Row.
The Social History project, funded by the National Park Service,
serves four needs: 1) establishes a research agenda for future
investigations of historical topics of VNHR; 2) establishes
research information for National Park Service interpretive
programs and VNHR educational programs; 3) provides narratives
on selected VNHR historical topics; 4) provides Web Site publications
of selected materials generated by this research work on VNHR.
Part One of the project focuses attention on VNHR
topics from 1846-1898, including the relationship between Fort
Vancouver's Hudson's Bay Company and the incoming U.S. military,
and women at Vancouver Barracks. Part Two
focuses on VNHR topics from 1898-1920; Part Three
focuses on VNHR topics from 1920 to 1942.
Hard copies of the reports are available at the Washington State Historical Society Research Center, the Oregon Historical Society Research Library, the Washington State University Vancouver Library, the Clark County Historical Musuem, the Portland State University Library, and the Fort Vancouver Regional Library.
The study's author is Donna Sinclair, MA, an independent historian who has been a CCRH associate since 1997. She is former special collections coordinator for oral history at the Oregon Historical Society and is completing her Ph.D. at Portland State University in the Urban Studies Department.
The three reports are available for downloading in PDF form by clicking on the links below.
|
