$23,000 sought for Arlington pioneer museum
Published 9:47 pm Tuesday, March 10, 2009
ARLINGTON — Without a roof, the new welcome center at the Stillaguamish Valley Pioneer Museum won’t go up.
Michele Heiderer knows that in the current economic climate, grant money is drying up and people are holding tight to their wallets.
It’s a shame, though, because she and other museum members are working on the final phase of building the welcome center, Heiderer said.
The $90,000 project is running about $23,000 shy, the amount needed to buy the last of the lumber and the roofing materials.
“It’s all come to a standstill because we’ve run out of money,” she said. “It’s going to be a beautiful historical attraction and a great learning tool for local students.”
When complete, the gazebolike center will resemble an open-air Salish longhouse that will shelter a 5-foot-by-10-foot carved cedar relief map of the Stillaguamish River watershed as it was in 1910, when Arlington was the cedar shake mill capital of the world.
The map is set to include pioneer communities, mines, logging operations, Stillaguamish tribal encampments and the sites of old roads, schools and cemeteries.
Plans call for the roof to be held up by a dozen 7-foot to 10-foot story poles. The poles were carved from cedar logs by well-known Lummi master carver Jewell James and based on the salmon story of the Stillaguamish Indian Tribe.
Heiderer, her husband Steve and their friends Shirley and Dick Prouty have volunteered years of time working on the on the project. The couples originally hoped to have the welcome center complete by this summer.
“Now we have to hope to it done by 2010,” Heiderer said. “We’ll celebrate the centennial of the 1910 plat map.”
A genealogist, Heiderer spent months poring over the Snohomish County plat map book of 1910, one of the first maps that detailed land ownership in the county. Her findings are in the hands of Twisp sculptor Bruce Morrison, who since 2006 has been curing and carving thick old growth cedar planks to make the map.
The Proutys found Morrison when they visited Winthrop three years ago and saw his relief map of the Methow River valley. Shirley Prouty was so impressed that she vowed then to obtain a similar map for the pioneer museum in Arlington.
Steve Heiderer and Dick Prouty donated their drafting and engineering skills to come up with plans for the center. Heiderer found reclaimed old growth timber to complete the structure, poured a cement slab, imprinted and colored to look like the Stillaguamish river bed.
The Stillaguamish Tribe has been the biggest contributor to the project with nearly $30,000, Shirley Prouty said.
Arlington Hardware pitched in supplies while the city of Arlington waived the building permit fee and added hotel-motel tax funding. Murdock Charitable Trust, Norcliffe Foundation and Pemco Insurance all have issued grant money for the project, and numerous individuals and groups joined the effort to build the center.
Loren Kraetz, whose grandparents homesteaded in the Stillaguamish Valley, said he is pleased to have the partnership of the Stillaguamish Tribe.
Michele Heiderer agreed.
“The history of the pioneers and the tribe comes to together to tell the story of the river,” she said. “That’s what the welcome center is all about.”
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427, gfiege@heraldnet.com.
