Elwha Tribal Center

Would you guess that there are 29 federally recognized Native American tribes in Washington State? Well, tiz so. Suz Bennett is the tribal historian for the Klallam Tribe in Port Angeles. She explained to me that there are three "parts" to the Klallam Tribe: Port Gamble, Jamestown and Klallam. All have health clinics, housing and casinos and all speak the same language but they are "separate but equal." 

The Elwha Tribal Center in Port Angeles (in the old Carnegie Library) is where to start learning about the Klallam peoples. When I visited there in May 2026, Suz was a deee-lightful tour guide. She showed me a 1000 pages dictionary of Klallam words...... for instance, the word for "sheep" is lemetu, pronounced "leMEtu." She explained that the site of their ancestral village is now a weedy fenced lot at the entrance to Ediz Hook but they have future plans for an interpretive center. She gave me a colored map of Clallam and Jefferson counties with dots showing the 26 sites of S'Klallam Villages of yesterday. 

The Center is open 8:00-4:30, Monday through Friday, and would welcome your visit. 

The Center has artifacts and exhibits which taught me more about these native peoples. Thank you, Suz, and may the Elwha Tribal Center thrive!

Mesa and Parker: Little WA Towns

 

Originally called Bluff Wells, then Judson and now Mesa, this little town in Franklin County was a stop on the Ainsworth (now Pasco) to Spokane branch of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The station house was established in 1883. Mesa is situated in Esquatzel Coulee which means it sits in a depression relative to the surrounding terrain. Apparently, Mesa does not have its own cemetery; the nearest one is City View Cemetery in Pasco.

Parker is a census-designated place in Yakima County, located on the Yakama Indian Reservation between Union Gap and Wapato. The first plat for the town was filed in 1909; it was originally settled by William Parker in 1864 and was named for him by the Northern Pacific Railway in 1890. The only cemetery I found for Parker was the Parker Dam Cemetery (on FindAGrave).

This cemetery is located on a hill behind a Yakama Nation fruit orchard; the cemetery contains a stone monument inscribed with the names of some of the Yakama Nation's notable Chiefs. There was once a thriving Yakama Indian community at Parker Dam which is the basis for the community that uses the Wapato Longhouse. 

Is there really a Parker Dam? YES! According to Google:

• Parker Reservoir Dam: This is a small 24-foot-high earth-fill dam located in Yakima County. It is in Dakota Draw, about 11 miles west of Yakima, Washington. 
  
• Parker Dam (Yakima River): A historical, low-head diversion dam located on the Yakama Indian Reservation along US Route 97 between Union Gap and Wapato. It was historically tied to a thriving Yakama Nation community. 

Roots, Records and Relatives

 Do hope you are planning to attend our EWGS Fall workshop on Saturday, October 3rd. 

I crafted this blurb months ago and so encourage you to click to our website, www.EWGSI.org, for the latest details. 

Consider this a teaser if you've not yet planned to come and have registered. (You do want lunch, do you not?)

More Lewis & Clark Plants

 Lewis & Clark documented many other plants besides Lewisia and Clarkia. 

In their journals, they noted Balsam Root, Prickly Pear Cactus, Glacier Lilies, Silky Lupine, Snowberry bushes and Bear Grass. How many have YOU seen????

Plants Named For Lewis & Clark

 

President Thomas Jefferson sent captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on a journey of exploration. Congress approved the expense of the venture because it was hoped that a water route across the continent would be discovered. On a personal note, Jefferson was eager to learn what there was to be discovered in the 530 million acres America had purchased from Spain in 1803 for a mere $15 million dollars.

There was no water route across the continent, as the Corps of Discovery found out. But Lewis and Clark collected and sent back to Jefferson 239 pressed plants and some 176 were new to science at that time. 

In what is now North Dakota, they "discovered" the plant was named after Meriwether Lewis, the lewisia.  (Pix on left.) This plant was also known as Bitterroot because the Indigenous Peoples had been making bread flour from the dried roots for centuries. Lewis found the taste bitter; hence the name. 

Clarkia (on the right) was named in honor of William Clark. Lewis found this plant near Kamiah, Idaho, in 1806 on their return trip. 

For the record, Lewis and Clark really didn't discover that many new plants. The specimens they collected were likely sub-sets (for lack of a better name here) of known species. 

Lewisias come in a variety of colors (as shown above) and may be purchased in most area garden centers in spring. They are a hardy perennial. 

Old Jokes For Old Folks

 

This is a deee-lightful, hits-the-nail-on-the-head joke book. For instance:

* "The future will soon be a thing of the past." George Carlin

* "You know you're old when you see the movie Jurassic Park and it brings back fond childhood memories."

* "The older I get, the better I used to be!"  Lee Trevino

* "Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late." Benjamin Franklin

* "Old age is 15 years older than I am."  Oliver Wendell Holmes

* "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."  Kurt Vonnegut

* "A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age."  Robert Frost

* "You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake." Bob Hope

* Some people will never be too old to learn new ways of being stupid.  Unkown

* "Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed." Charles Schulz

* "You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred."  Woody Allen

* "If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old."  James A Garfield

Baumann's Excelsior Meat Roaster

 
Charles Bauman's Meat Shop was a thriving business in Belleville, Illinois. The business placed this ad in The Semi-Weekly Advocate, the local paper, on Friday, Sept 26, 1879:

BAUMANN'S EXCELSIOR MEAT ROASTER

"This apparatus is an air-tight chest or box, which must be put in the parking part of the Cooking stove. By this mode of Roasting or Baking, meats will cook as tender as mutton. Poultry of all kinds cooked in this way is the most palatable and delicious ever produced by any other mode of cooking and as regards economy this chest cannot be excelled. The cost of this apparatus will be more than saved in three or four months from the fact that butter, (by the way, a large item in the course of a few years) as the essence from the meat forms a most delicious gravy, by a distilling process. The chest if made of the best quality of sheet iron, on a self-sealing principle. Any housewife who gives it a fair trial will not do without it. The cost of the Apparatus is very small, from the fact that it is very durable. If well cared for it will last from ten to fifteen years.            320 East Main Street, Belleville, Ill. 

This image is the best I could find for a Baumann's Excelsior Meat Roaster. 

Likely not correct but surely close?