WSU archaeologist Richard Daugherty dies

Published 7:22 pm Wednesday, February 26, 2014

PULLMAN — Richard Daugherty, a Washington State University archaeologist who led the excavation of the so-called “Pompeii of America,” has died of bone cancer.

The university announced Wednesday that Daugherty died Saturday at the age of 91.

Starting in the 1970s, Daugherty worked closely with the Makah tribe during the 11-year Ozette excavation on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. A winter storm in 1970 had eroded a bank near Cape Alava, revealing five longhouses buried by a landslide, possibly from the massive earthquake of 1700.

It became the largest, most complex archaeological site in the Pacific Northwest

Daugherty was born in Aberdeen, Wash. During World War II, he piloted blimps out of Lakehurst, N.J., to look for enemy vessels.