This year, the Clarke Museum participated in Sumeg Village day through the loaning of a museum dress and dentalium necklaces to be worn during a dress walk. The dress walk event was an opportunity for people to see the incredible dresses created by local people or members from local tribes, dresses that are typically worn during ceremonial events and dances. The Clarke Museum dress was worn by Isobel, a junior docent at the Clarke and granddaughter of museum board member Shirley Laos. Board member Rachel Sundberg organized the dress walk and spoke with the public about the dresses and their making.

In July of 1911 the brick building was demolished to make way for a new building and the bank offices and vaults were moved across the street during construction.


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The big focus for Victorians at Halloween however, was hosting parties and playing parlor games. In Halloween parlor games specifically, the Victorians focused a lot on different methods of divination, trying to determine their own futures and the futures of their friends and family. This was connected to the rise of Spiritualism, an American religious movement that focused around communicating with spirits and using these communications to predict the future, oftentimes by using divination practices derived from other cultural and religious traditions. Halloween games during this period were typically played by the younger generations of Victorians, many of whom ascribed to Spiritualist ideas, whereas older generations saw the divination games as designations of a lack of intelligence.

In the Parlor, we have an example of one of these Halloween traditions geared towards divining. A fruitcake would be baked with tokens inside: a thimble, a ring, a key, a button, and a coin. Each attendee would get a slice of the cake, passed out by the oldest person in the room, and if you got one of the tokens, it was said to predict your future for the next year as a spinster or bachelor (thimble), married (ring), wealthy (coin), finding love (button) or going on a journey (key).

Another popular game involved a woman standing in front of a mirror in a darkened room with a knife and an apple. Different versions of the game exist, however a more common version was peeling the apple in front of the mirror, which would reveal the person that the woman would marry or a skeleton if they were to die before they were married. Apple bobbing was also popular, with the belief that whoever would get an apple first would be the next to get married.  ​

The Victorian period is also known as a time when upper class women wore layers and layers of rich, heavy fabrics to illustrate their wealth. These fabrics were supported by a crinoline, a cage-like undergarment worn under heavy skirts to support them and add volume. While they did reduce the layers of petticoats (underskirts) that women had to wear to add volume to their dresses, the crinolines created their own set of problems for the wearer. 

Thanks to the Benbow Inn, the Lytel Foundation, the McLean Foundation, Alves Inc. and Bruce Pettit, the Clarke was able to get a brand new roof installed on the historic Bank of Eureka building side of the museum. It's sure to protect our historic building and museum collections for decades to come!

Thanks to Arcata High School photography students, Redwood National and State Parks staff, and Darcy Brown, we were able to enlist the help of the public to put up a fun and touching public display of Redwood Stories on our Opera Alley wall. Stories were accepted during the opening night of our Redwoods Provide(d) exhibit on July 7 and during the Eureka Street Art Festival in August. Hundred of people stopped by the see the wall and close to 100 people contributed their stories. You can view all the stories here along with the photos on the wall that were taken by Arcata High School photography students under the direction of Johanna Mauro and Emily Evans.

...was a roaring success! This year's party included shish ke-babs with veggies and chicken, Al's Oysters,
 beer from Six Rivers, Lost Coast and Mad River brewing companies, wine from Violet-Green Winery. The Latin Peppers brought their sweet and spicy tunes out to Clarke Plaza while Wynsome Winds provided relaxing flute music to Nealis Hall. Thank you to all those who volunteered to help with this event and thank you to all those who came out to support! 

We've partnered with the Eureka Visitor Center and the Redwood Coast Energy authority to source 100% of our electricity from local and renewable resources through RCEA's REpower+ program. You can learn more about the conversion here!

With changing seasons comes changing exhibits! The Victorian Room is getting a holiday makeover, with mini exhibits on Victorian Halloween traditions in October and Christmas Traditions in December.

​The Art Wall will also be changing to feature the works of local artist Cora Wright in celebration of her 150th birthday in December. The exhibit will be open for display on November 3.

With the end of summer, we're planning out next year's exhibits for the museum. The main hall exhibits will change three times in 2019, with exhibits on:

• Humboldt Industries
• Quilting and Community
• Prohibition in Humboldt County (in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Prohibition)

Nealis Hall exhibits will also be changing so stay tuned!

​I spoke with a few people about the new donation and received a number of comments along the lines of “why would people hang onto stuff like that? It’s a time in history that’s something to forget about.” 

While I did feel weird unfolding the flag (which was almost as long as the museum office is wide) to look for maker's marks and researching Nazi armbands on the internet, I thought a lot about the things people hang onto. Why would someone fighting the Nazis save some of their stuff? And what kind of historical value do they have in a local history museum? ​

People hang onto all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. We oftentimes hold memories in the items we possess and in the items of people we know. I have a plate that hangs on my wall at home with a donkey surrounded by dogwoods that was from my grandparent’s basement, which reminds me of all the fun times I had there as a kid that also unknowingly prepared me for working in a museum. We attach memories and stories of experiences into the items we find, purchase, carry with us, and leave behind, creating a chain of memories.

The recent uptick in "Identity Evropa" postings around Humboldt County is an example of how the symbols of hate regenerate with new populations drawing from past ideologies and adopting their own symbolism. The group has been posting images of  European statues with  statements that give a polished and neutral face to a white supremacy organization focused on creating a unified group oriented around a common "European" identity-similar to how the Nazis tried to organize around an Aryan identity via tactics including the adoption of the swastika.  ​​While the group currently tries to avoid inflammatory statements against non-white groups, that doesn't mean that their actions don't say the words their overarching organizers prevent them from saying. ​

Additionally, the Nazis used fashionable, trendy posters and models to promote Nazism in Germany, such as this poster that promotes the National Socialist Student Union. One of "Identity Evropa" goals is to have their symbols and sayings become so embedded in daily life that white supremacy becomes acceptable in day to day society. In Nazi Germany, the swastika was incorporated into daily life in an incredibly similar way, with the symbol appearing in children's books, on propaganda posters, and on the armbands of teachers, along with being openly displayed by supporters through flags like the one donated to the museum.  ​There are even parallels between Nazism promoted in universities and Identity Evropa's focus on canvassing university campuses.

​I finished processing the new donation and put the Nazi items into our storage. We hold onto these things that we’d rather forget but must, at all costs, remember, lest we let it happen again. 

​World War II left its mark in Humboldt County in a few different ways. A number of community members served in the war, and many are memorialized in our special exhibition at the Airport. Items from many locals who served can be found in the Clarke collections, from photos to uniforms. Local buildings were even affected, with Founders Hall at HSU being painted in camouflage to the bunkers in Samoa and other structures. Some of those structures are within the present-day Redwood National and State Parks, most notably the Klamath River Radar Site B-71. Rather than being painted green, brown and black, the site used a different type of camouflage to conceal its real purpose.

​Another mark is located further north, in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. Known as the largest WWII memorial in the US, the National Tribute grove is a 5,000 acre grove dedicated in memory of those who died in WWII and was started by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who invested $3,000 of the $26,000 needed to purchase the grove for preservation. The Garden Club of America pitched in to help raise money and the effort was led by Save the Redwoods League, who had spearheaded the memorial grove movement. The project began in 1946 and the names of the donors and people honored by the grove were recorded in a “Golden Book” in the National Archives. The grove was officially dedicated by Newton B Drury on September 25, 1949, who stated that the grove would be a “memorial of eternal gratitude, eternally expressed”. For a time, the exact location of the grove marker had been lost in foliage due to lack of access to the site, but in 2014, the marker was found and moved to a popular day use area near the grove to ensure that the memorial would be easily accessible. 

This incredible chainsaw, with a 6 foot bar, was used to cut old growth redwoods in the forests of Humboldt County. It is on loan to the museum during our exhibit from Timber Heritage Association, an organization that is building a world-class collection of logging tools, machinery, and more in Samoa. They're locally known for their Speeder Car rides that run all around the county in the summertime.

When I first started scouting items to borrow for the exhibit, this poster appeared in the Redwood National and State Parks Archives. With it's scowling face and furrowed eyebrows with bold text, I thought it would make a great presentation piece in the exhibit. This photo is a reprint of the original. The Parks Archives loaned us many of the high-impact pieces on display, including the standing map displaying the expansion of the Park, the Clean Logged and Seeded sign in the pro-logging propaganda case, the vibrant photos taken by Don Anthrop throughout the exhibit, and the burls on display in the center of the exhibit. 

This case contains a number of personal items from Lucille Vinyard, whom many call the mother of Redwood National Park. Items related to her work to establish the parks can be found at Humboldt State University or online here.
This case offered interns at Humboldt State the opportunity to apply skills from their ongoing internship, sponsored by the National Parks Service, in bringing archives into the public eye. 

This tool was used to map out the expansion of the Redwood National Park in the 1970s and 1980s. it uses aerial photos, mirrors, and magnifying glasses connected to a movable frame to allow the user to trace out the terrain onto a separate map.

These types of tools were used to create what later became base maps for GIS and GPS, and for programs like Google Maps.