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| North Cascades Highway |
Last month we took a road trip around the north Cascades highway. The trip allowed me a great opportunity to do historical research for my next book by way of small town museums. The first stop was Sedro-Woolley, a town far north of Seattle, established in late 1898. What an education this was!
According to the museum in Sedro-Woolley, outdoor privies were often relocated and then used as trash dumps. A lot can be learned about history from digging up these pits. Pottery, utensils, old bottles of many varieties, pistols, shoes, buckets, decorative household pieces, and tools were disposed in privies. Why my interest? I was going to have my protagonist avoid an old outhouse while searching property that had belonged to her family for over 100 years, but now this might be a way for her to dig up history. At the very least it deserves a mention in the story. Hmmm….
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| https://www.omventure.com/blog/mazama-store-in-mazama-washington |
Another excellent example of old northwestern towns is Winthrop,
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| https://www.travelyesplease.com/travel-blog-winthrop-washington/ |
WA. The sidewalks are still boardwalk and all of the stores feature old western fronts. Due to the timing of our visit, I had to satisfy my museum interest with an online visit to the Shafer Historical Museum. It’s a town I hope we can visit again when everything is open.
I brought home two books about the history of life in small towns in the early 1900s. This information will aid my research of the historical period in my dual timeline story. While we can read about history, dig it up, and view artifacts, sometimes all this information raises more questions than answers about the past.
