Local artisan wares include pottery, linocuts prints, fine art paintings, scientific illustrations, felted hats and tie dye clothing, jewelry, photography, mosaics, whimsical art, and more!
Entertainment in the Doerfler Family Theater includes a video presentation and interpretations of our archival photographs by LCHS volunteer Carol Shenk and music by Bethlyn Brandt, the Coastal Aires, Spruce Tips, and James J. Ferguson.
UPDATE: This exhibit has been extended for two weeks and will now be on display until January 26th.
“Take Me to the Water: Histories of the Black Pacific” at the Pacific Maritime Heritage Center Reveals Historic Connections Between People of African Descent and the Pacific Ocean.
Most accounts of the United States’ maritime enterprises are disproportionately populated by white seafarers. The Lincoln County Historical Society is pleased to present a new exhibition that expands that narrative to include the many Black whalers, commercial mariners, fishers, explorers, soldiers, and sailors who traveled along the Pacific Coast and traversed the high seas from the 16th century to the present day. Take Me to the Water: Histories of the Black Pacific tells the stories of these mariners, their impact in shaping the American Pacific, and their legacy in the context of development of society and identity. Take Me to the Water opens November 23, 2024 and will be on view through January 12, 2025.
Importantly, this exhibition recenters the relationship between Black folks, water, and ships. Take Me to the Water moves beyond the entrenched narrative of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and towards the understanding that Black people have not only existed in the Pacific region for centuries, but played an integral role in the development of Pacific economy and society. Visitors will be introduced to the early freedoms some Africans experienced through exploration and service on the high seas, roots of seafaring and surfing that can be traced back to Africa’s western coast, Black labor in shipbuilding, longshoring and other coastal industries, Black folks’ advancements in scientific research, and the exchange of experiences, ideas, and creation of new communities for people of African descent along the Pacific.
The exhibition is curated by Dr. Caroline Collins, who charts her interest in Black people’s relationships with water and watercraft to a childhood that included regular visits to Southern California beaches. Dr. Collins is an incoming Assistant Professor at UC San Diego; UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at UC Irvine, an affiliated researcher with the Democracy Lab and the Indigenous Futures Institute at UC San Diego, and is a co-founder of “Black Like Water,” an interdisciplinary research collective at UCSD that highlights Black relationships to the natural world.
An opening reception will take place on Saturday, November 23, from 1pm to 4pm. Additional related programming includes a talk by Zachary Stocks, Executive Director of Oregon Black Pioneers at 2pm. Information on Zachary Stocks’ presentation is below:
The Shorey’s in Hammond
In the 1910s, Capt. William Shorey and his family were prominent members of Oakland, California’s Black upper class. But in the 1920 census, his wife (now a widow) and their children were living in the tiny town of Hammond on the Oregon Coast. Zachary Stocks of Oregon Black Pioneers will describe how this wealthy Black family ended up there, and how he uncovered the story.
Exhibition Support
This project is made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. The exhibition tours through Exhibit Envoy.
About Exhibit Envoy
Exhibit Envoy provides traveling exhibitions and professional services to museums throughout California. For more information, visit http://www.exhibitenvoy.org.
About California Humanities
For over 45 years, California Humanities has helped give voice to voices seldom heard. Through grants and special programs that reach into every corner of our state, we help tell the stories of California. Visit http://www.calhum.org to learn more.
About the Lincoln County Historical Society
The Lincoln County Historical Society manages two museums and a total of five historic buildings in Newport, Oregon. We are dedicated to preserving and interpreting the history of the central Oregon coast.
Thank you to our local sponsors for this exhibit!
We are excited to announce that our rooftop patio here at the Pacific Maritime Heritage Center is back open to museum visitors! We couldn’t imagine a more beautiful late-October day for the reopening. Come visit the PMHC for the best view in town overlooking Newport’s fishing fleet at Port Dock 5 and the Yaquina Bay Bridge.
Thank you to RubberForm for donating recycled tiles, the Coast Guard for help removing the old tiles, the Port of Newport for forklift and railing welding, Skriver Construction, and our many volunteers for help with this project.
We are open from 11am-4pm here at the PMHC on Tuesdays-Sundays and the rooftop patio will be open when the weather cooperates (like today!).
The Lincoln County Historical Society welcomes you to our third and final science talk in conjunction with our new exhibit, Cycles of Nature, which explores how human activity impacts nature and its cycles. Echoes Beneath the Waves: Analysis of human-made and natural ocean sounds for insights into the state of marine ecosystems is free talk and will take place on Thursday, September 12th at 6pm.
Dr. Bob Dziak will discuss the fundamentals of underwater sound and present several examples of natural and human-made ocean sound sources from locations ranging from the Mariana Trench and Challenger Deep (deepest spot in the global ocean), to ice shelves along coastal Antarctica, to examples of underwater sound levels in the northeast Pacific Ocean during the “anthropause,” the period of reduced maritime activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of his works are also on a screen at the exhibit Cycles of Nature.
Dr. Bob Dziak is a Research Oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, managing an Ocean Acoustics Program focused on a wide variety of ocean science and engineering topics. His work includes evaluating marine seismic and volcanic hazards, developing deep-ocean sound sensing technologies, assessing Antarctic ice shelf stability, and detecting baleen whale populations. Previously, he worked at Oregon State University for 26 years, during which time he earned a PhD in Marine Geophysics and was ultimately promoted to Research Professor. Bob has received several national honors, including the Presidential Early Career Award, the NOAA Administrator’s Award, and was named a Fulbright Scholar. He lives in Seal Rock, and enjoys beach walks and hikes with family and friends.
The Lincoln County Historical Society manages the Pacific Maritime Heritage Center, the Burrows House Museum, the Log Cabin Research Library, and two artifact storage facilities, all in Newport. We are dedicated to preserving and interpreting the history of the central Oregon coast.
Join us on Sunday, September 8th from 2pm to 3:30pm at the Pacific Maritime Heritage Center for a Yaquina Bay Bridge Panel Discussion. This is a free program.
Celebrating Ninety Years of Newport’s Yaquina Bay Bridge: In 1934, construction began on the last five bridges designed to close the remaining watery gaps on Oregon’s Highway 101. The last one to open in summer of 1936, the Yaquina Bay Bridge was celebrated for both its beauty and its contribution to the coast’s accessibility for commerce and tourism. In this ninety-minute program, a panel of three state experts explore the bridge’s significance as a Depression-era project, an example of state bridge engineer Conde McCullough’s design excellence, and its preservation into the twenty-first century. Judith Kenny, Oregon Associate from the Living New Deal, will introduce a short, eight-minute film titled In Landscape Harmony: New Deal Bridges for the Oregon Coast. Robert Hadlow, author of Elegant Arches, Soaring Spans: C.B. McCullough, Oregon’s Master Bridge Builder will comment on bridge designer Conde McCullough’s aesthetic and transportation legacy. Bringing the discussion into the present, Oregon State Bridge Engineer and author of Bridges of the Oregon Coast Ray Bottenberg will talk about the future of the Yaquina Bay Bridge and the bridges of Oregon’s coastal highway.
Judith T Kenny, PhD. Oregon Associate, Living New Deal
After retiring as a professor of Geography and Urban Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (1990-2012), Judith returned to her home state of Oregon to reacquaint herself with the state’s landscape and history. Given her parents’ stories of Depression era rural Oregon, she was drawn to work for the national non-profit, the Living New Deal. For more than ten years, Judith has traveled the state’s highways and forest tracks to document New Deal sites in every one of its thirty-six counties. Recently, she became producer of a video series, “Mapping New Deal Oregon,” to capture further Oregon’s New Deal legacy.
Robert W. Hadlow, Ph.D., Senior Historian, Oregon Department of Transportation
Robert W. Hadlow is the senior historian with the Oregon Department of Transportation, where he completes Section 106 and Section 4(f) documentation for highway and rail projects. He prepared a National Historic Landmark nomination for the Columbia River Highway Historic District (designated in 2000). The Oregon State University Press published his book-length biography of Conde B. McCullough in 2001, Elegant Arches, Soaring Spans: C. B. McCullough, Oregon’s Master Bridge Builder. When he is not pursuing transportation history, you might see him out on the backroads around Portland driving his 1939 Buick Roadmaster.
Ray Bottenberg, PE, SE is the State Bridge Engineer at Oregon Department of Transportation.
A 1986 mechanical engineering graduate of Oregon State University, Ray worked as an aircraft structures engineer for The Boeing Company in Seattle, Washington from 1986 to 1997 and worked as a project manager/engineer for a commercial/industrial heating, ventilating, and air conditioning contractor before joining ODOT in 1999. At ODOT he started in Bridge Design in 2001, moved into Bridge Preservation in 2003, eventually becoming the Bridge Preservation Unit Manager, and then State Bridge Engineer. In his spare time he has authored several local history books, including “Bridges of the Oregon Coast” and “Bridges of Portland”.
