INVITATION TO JOIN OUR RIDGEFIELD LIVING HISTORY PROJECT!!!

Most historical records are about land acquisitions, wills, births, deaths and marriages. The RLHP is about these things and more. We are interested in the people who lived here before and who live here now. Participate as little or much as you like.

• Record/video/write to preserve oral histories in the greater Ridgefield Area - anyone who has history here: tribal, early settlers, residency or business, schools, clubs, past and current residents, young and old! (Minors will need written parental permission for this activity outside their own families.)

• Photo Grid Preservation of Ridgefield 2010-2011: One sq.mile sections on a map will be assigned randomly and be photographed over a year. The Clark County Historical Museum has agreed to post photos and photographers' names.

• Engage our businesses: Preserve the current and past histories of businesses.

• Create personal family trees and provide free beginners’ genealogy classes.

• Preserve the experiences of Ridgefielders who met famous visitors (for example, Charles Lindbergh)

• Preserve the stories of ‘what life used to be like’ when a person was a child.

• Collaborate with the tribes who are and were here, and wish to share histories

• Engage newcomers and oldtimers and in-betweens as a community building exercise in which everyone interested in Ridgefield can participate.

• Compile Political History of Ridgefield: Who were our mayors, councilpersons?

• Provide resources contacts and links: Libraries, Clark County, Olympia, and groups like the Mayflower Society (10% of all Americans are descended from them) and some of the Royals sites (150 million Americans, or about half, are descended from royals born before the 17th century), the Clark County Genealogical Society, the Clark County Historical Museum, etc.

• Ridgefield Schools History: Hopefully the school can provide scans of class pictures, locals can provide photos others can help identify, etc.

• History of the Arts in the Ridgefield Area: those here and those who lived here.

• Collaborations/support of the Cemetery Committee, the Heritage Committee, the Clark County Historical Museum/Society and local clubs/organizations in the Ridgefield Area.

• Eventual goals: Ridgefield's own historical museum and society (perhaps as a branch of our Clark County Historical Society/Museum).

Got a better idea? Come to our first meeting:

When: Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 7:00 pm

Where: Pickled Heron Gallery, 418 Pioneer Street, Ridgefield, WA 98642

INFO: Elizabeth Madrigal @ 360-887-4530

Email: ridgefieldlivinghistoryproject@gmail.com

Mailing address: RLHP, c/o Elizabeth Madrigal, 31607 NW 44th Avenue, Ridgefield, WA 98642

Facebook Fan Page:  Ridgefield Living History Project

Columbia Mammoth Fossil Tusk found in Ridgefield

For those of you who heard about the fossil excavated from thirty feet down by DBM Contractors, the drilling sub-contractor for the new Exit 14 Interstate 5 exchange, here is a link to the Columbian article:

http://www.columbian.com/news/2010/feb/12/its-kind-of-mind-blowing-actually-brad-clark/

It sounds crazy, but in February of 2010 Inspector Brad Clark noticed debris in the dirt and decided that it didn't really look like wood.  He halted the work and picked out the pieces putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle. The inspector described the smell as 'indescribable', because he probably is much more polite than you or I would be, but 15,000 year old decaying matter might be a bit rich.

Clark is a WSDOT inspector, and so he contacted the environmental department and Roger Kiers, an archaelogist, drove down from Olympia.  It appears that Clark was correct and the tusk is believed to be from a Columbian Mammoth, the Washington State fossil.:)  These mammoths roamed this area up until about 10,000 years ago, but this particular tusk is estimated to be older.

Speculation about how the animal ended up embedded in claysoils and sediment are many, but it is fun for everyone to imagine what it would have been like to see one of these creatures lumbering past one's "plankhouse". Below is an artist's rendering of the animals from the La Brea Tarpits museum. It is interesting to note that geneticists have unscrambled about four-fifths of its genome making these sorts of discoveries all the more interesting. 

Courtesy of Flickr photo: Travis S.