Spokane Historical Sources

My bibliography (so far) is as follows:

Mullan Trail:
1. Coleman, Louis and Leo Rieman  Building The Mullan Road:  As it is Today and Interesting Tales of Occurances Along the Road.  Montreal:  Payette Radio Limited, 1968.
2. Winther, Oscar Osburn. Early Commercial Importance of the Mullan Road. Oregon Historical Quarterly, vol. 46,1945,p.22-35.

Qualchan Hanging Site:
1. Boyden, T.G.  Warriors of the Mist:  A Biography of Qualchan, Chief Owhi's Son.  Fairfield, WA:  Ye Galleon Press, 1996.

Spangle:
1. Hengen, Nona.  Gateway to the Palouse:  A story about the Spangles and other Settlers on a New Frontier.  Spangle, WA:  Palouse Press, 1987.
2.WSU Small Manuscripts Collection, First Spangle Postal Worker recollections

Farmington:
1. Archie Camp Interview, Spokane Voices of the Pioneers Digital Collection.  Eastern Washington University, 1961.
2. WSU Small Manuscripts Collection, Pioneer farming recollections

Elberton:
1. Whitman County Ghost Towns website, http://www.ghosttownsofwashington.com/Elberton.php
2. WSU Small Manuscripts Collection, Pioneer recollections

Rosalia:
1. Battlefield, Wright/Steptoe/Spokan/Palus

Steptoe
1. Elliot, T.C. Steptoe Butte and Steptoe Battlefield.  The Washington Historical Quarterly, vol.18,1927,p.243-253

Spokane-Pullman Passenger Train, The "Bug": 
1. Jonasson, Jonas A. They Rode the Trains: Railroad Passenger Traffic and Regional Reaction. Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol.52,1961,p.41-49.













 

Shameless Picasa Plug & Preliminary Bibliography

After initially creating my Picasa account the few pictures I had in my files were uploaded automatically to Picasa.  I thought nothing of it and went about my business.  A week later while doing my Palouse research, I was visiting the archives and special collections at the WSU library and I found myself unable to use the scanner correctly and thought it would be easier to just use my cell phone to snap some photos of the 60+ documents I found in regards to my research for my final project.  When I got back to Spokane and tried to retrieve the pictures from my phone to print out I was having no luck at all, nothing but problems not matter what I tried.  I then decided to e-mail the pictures to my gmail account and when I opened gmail and downloaded my archive pictures I noticed that, without having selected or done anything first, Picasa was syncing with gmail with every file download and soon I had all my badly needed documents in Picasa, nice and instantly organized. 

Then I ran into yet another problem with my cell phone pictures - while taking the pics, I was partially blocking the light causing the documents to come out with some serious shadowing.  Although I can read them, I know that if these were ever to be uploaded to Omeka they would be damn near unreadable.  Again, Picasa comes in to save the day.  I noticed that there is an option which allows you to lighten (or darken) your photos.  With a simple slide of the icon, I made the final printed product even lighter and more readable than the original document was in the archives.  In short, Picasa has been a godsend for my research, for both accessibility and practicality.  I would suggest that everyone doing their projects this year utilize Picasa as much as possible, especially if you are planning on using your android device to take pictures of documents.  And its easy as heck to use.                                           

Preliminary bibliography for my Palouse stops.  The Whitman and Spokane County towns (and area historical events) that I am focusing on are:  Farmington, Spangle, Hangman Valley (Qualchan), Garfield, Pullman, Malden, Steptoe and Rosalia (both the battle and the town, of course).

Although I am still in the process of finding more sources and documents I do have some, especially certain towns.  So far I have focused on collecting documents for these places that include settler correspondence, incorporation records, train orders, social clubs/fraternal organization records and government records.  I have also been looking through many secondary sources such as local/regional histories and family histories.

Secondary Sources: Gateway to the Palouse,  Nona Hengen.  Plowed Under, Andrew Duffin.  The Pacific Northwest, Carlos Schwantes.  Warrior of the Mist, T.G. Boyden.  Renegade Tribe, Richard Scheuerman.  Palouse Country, Richard Scheuerman.  Finding Cheif Kamiakin, Michael O. Finley and Richard Scheuerman.

Primary Sources:  1888 train orders for Pullman, Sprague and Palouse City. Student correspondence from Washington State College. Document in reference to the first telephone line installed in the towns of Colfax and Almota.  Farmington, Past and Present, first person accounts of early pioneer day in Farmington. Accounts of first postal worker in Spangle and his frontier experiences. State incororation documents for Garfield, Pullman and Rosalia.       

The 7 Elements of Digital Storytelling

The seven elements of digital storytelling are a relatively simple and easy to follow set of reccomended guidelines which are essentially blueprints for using the subtleties (and not-so-subtleties), nuances and etiquette of multimedia production in the best possible manner on order to most effectively convey one's story, whatever that may be.  These elements are most especially helpful for amateurs such as myself who have little to no experience in using (properly, I might add) the many different techniques that are involved with an undertaking such as digital storytelling.  In fact, the power of quality (or sub par) digital storytelling production is so strong that it can and will be the ultimate factor in whether people will even watch, read or listen to your story.  This can make a normally boring topic seem almost exciting, while conversely it can also make a normally exciting topic dull, boring and even hardly worth the time to examine.
                                      
Telling a story is an art form.  This is true in not only the digital world, but also within storytelling in the traditional sense.  It is not only difficult, but frustrating to listen to someone explain something who fails to understand or grasp the art of storytelling.  For example, we have all been forced to sit through a story with those speaking too fast, too quiet, too slow, or too loud while they are talking about something in a manner that is confusing or uninteresting.  These same problems occur in digital form as well. Then there are those who can convey a story in an intelligible and captivating mannner that even when they are talking about relatively mundane topics they are still able to hold an audience.  These are the stories we remember.  By using the seven elements of digital storytelling we will also tell our stories in a way that is conducive towards captivating and educating our audience.  No one should be dumber for having heard or read a bad story told by a bad storyteller.
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Get it?
(image courtesy of NRA)
  

8 stops in the Palouse

8 stops for a driving tour of the Palouse (northern Whitman County) for Spokane Historical. Here are my tentative candidates: 1) Tekoa, 2) Farmington, 3) Garfield, 4) Elberton, 5) Steptoe. 6) St. John, 7) Pine City, 8) Malden.  These stops will give those taking the tour a simple loop from Tekoa, south, and around to Malden to the west. There is alot of rich cultural and historical significance in and surrounding these little farming communities and most of these towns have yet to tell their story to the rest of us in Washington. Looking forward to delving into this project. I am also looking forward to everyone else's projects. Good luck all.