I’m by no means an expert, but I do refer to myself as SCARC’s resident “map nut.” Maps are like onions (or parfaits, if you will): each layer peels back a little piece of the historical narrative. Place names can provide insight into the way people of the past saw their world. The features highlighted or absent from a map can tell you the value placed on aspects of the physical environment. Items like Sanborn maps can tell you how cities grew and developed, and what features of the land and society affected that growth.

In my work as the Public Services Unit Supervisor in SCARC, I help researchers of all kinds, from Corvallis and around the world, access our materials, and introduce them to the tricks, tips, and tools to navigate our research portals. I always feel honored and humbled to be invited into their research processes, and whenever I can I try to highlight the products of their work. 

Cases en pointe are the four digital databases in this post. They all – to the surprise of no one who knows me – map aspects of the built and natural environment, from the vantage point of the past and the present. 

One quick item of note: one of the guiding principles of the archival profession is to protect all users’ right to privacy by maintaining the confidentiality of their research. To that end, the names of researchers have been omitted from this post in all except one case; only information about their research outcome is included.

OSU Campus Arboretum Web Map 

Dan Blanchard, Horticulture Instructor and Curator of Living Plant Collections for OSU Campus Arboretum, began work on OSU’s Arboretum Web Map as a graduate student in 2022. As a result of his work, OSU was granted ArbNet Level II Arboretum Accreditation in 2023. 

Since then, Dan and a number of dedicated student assistants have continued to document additional trees, and more are added to the web map frequently. To date, 630 trees  have been mapped on OSU’s main campus in Corvallis, including two blue atlas cedars planted in 1892, the giant sequoias in the Memorial Union quad, and OSU’s very own “moon tree” (located on the east side of the Peavy Forest Science Center).

On the left side of the main landing page of the Arboretum Web Map, visitors will find instructions for using various features of the map, and definitions of terminology and acronyms used. Drop-downs on the right side of the map can be used to identify individual trees by Common Name (e.g. American Elm, Bur Oak, Red Maple), Genus (e.g. Carpinus, Styrax), and Common Family Name (e.g. Beech family, Birch family). The scroll wheel can be used to Zoom in and out, and clicking on any individual orange pin will open a window with more information about that individual tree (e.g. height, diameter, and date of last measurement).

Atlas of Drowned Towns

The Atlas of Drowned Towns is a “public history project that explores the histories of the communities that were displaced or disappeared to make way for the reservoirs for…‘river development projects’ — aka large dams.” 

From the interactive map (linked at the top of the landing page), users can click on the compass icon on the left to apply filters and overlaps to the map (e.g. aerial photographs and historical maps), view “artifacts” associated with each community (e.g. photographs, documents, oral histories), and read historical research about displaced communities. Clicking on the lightbulb icon on the right side of the interactive map shows aggregated data for the number of displaced communities, the people displaced, and total cost of displacement. Alternatively, users can view a list of all displaced communities documented as part of the project from the Directory page. 

Please note that this project is still in development, and most content and functionality are currently focused on Detroit, Oregon. 

Mapping Inequality

The University of Richmond’s Mapping Inequality Project, an “open access project [focusing] on red-lining, the practice of denying financial services to residents based on race or ethnicity,” includes maps of a wide variety of U.S. urban centers. While the heaviest concentration of maps are of East Coast and Midwestern cities (e.g. Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Boston) cities in Oregon and Washington are also featured, including Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, and Portland. From the map view, clicking the “Select City” box will show a list of all cities and counties featured on the map, arranged alphabetically by state.

For each map, information is included that documents how areas were categorized (e.g. Best, Still Desirable, Definitely Declining, and Hazardous), and populated (i.e. with regards to race). Clicking on any of the defined areas of individual city maps provides additional information on that area’s inhabitants and characteristics.

Please note: Some of the language used in the historical documents and maps on this site may be disturbing or activating. In several instances, map authors use racist, derogatory, and harmful language. Specifically, the use of slurs against Asian and Pacific Island people, and toward African Americans, is prevalent, as is anti-semitic language.

Living New Deal

What began in California in 2005, has since become a nationwide effort to inventory, map, and interpret New Deal public works. This interactive website allows users to access photographs, site information, historic documents, and personal accounts, and New Deal site maps can be browsed by city, state, artist name (arranged by first name), agency (e.g. Bureau of Public Roads), and category (e.g. Art Works, Civic Facilities). 
The interactive state map for Oregon alone includes historical information for over 300 New Deal sites. For each site, the following information is included as applicable and known: City, Site Type (e.g. Parks and Recreation, Dam), New Deal Agencies involved, when construction began and was completed, a brief description / historical narrative, and photographs (both present and historical). The Advanced Search feature – accessed by hovering over the word “Maps” in the blue banner at the top of each page – can be used to search across the nearly 19,000 sites documented to date.

Rachel Lilley (she/they) is the Public Services Unit Supervisor at the Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC), and has worked as a reference archivist for over a decade (eight years of which has been at OSU).  She holds an M.A. in History with a concurrent certificate in Archives and Records Management from Western Washington University.

In historical and archival work, students are constantly reminded not to underestimate the power of a single historical artifact and the stories it can tell. Even an unsuspecting image of farmland can spur historical intrigue with just a bit of curiosity and detective work.

One such example came about while working with the Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin Illustrations, 1925-1941. This collection is a part of SCARC’s ongoing “Photo Collection Tidying” project, wherein we work to ensure that all boxes and folders in photographic collections are clearly described in their finding aids. To do so, we ensure that the images represented in a collection’s finding aid match the images physically present in collection folders. 

While working with the Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin Illustrations to organize and compare the physical photos present against the collection’s finding aid, I came across “Item SB 318: Cost and efficiency in dairy farming in Oregon, September 1933”, which is actually a series of 34 photographs and 46 diagrams. The preexisting description for this series of images reads, “Cows at pasture; types of pasture; alfalfa crop; kale and corn silage; R.H. Christensen Coos River Farm; loafing sheds”.

At this point, my interest was piqued. I am from Coos Bay, Oregon, and more specifically, grew up on Coos River (and still call this place home). Myself and my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents have lived on Coos River at different periods since the early 1960s. Upon discovering this piece of Coos River history, I thought it likely that if I found where the farm had been located, I would recognize the land. Thus, I set out to find where this “R. H. Christensen Coos River Farm” had been located. 

Before going to maps collections, I quickly searched the name in SCARC’s holdings. A search for “R.H. Christensen” resulted in images from Laverne, Oregon, located on the Coquille River about a 40 minute drive south of Coos River. For example, the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department Photographs, 1925-1979, contains “Item 3-G-101: Homemade power plant, Laverne, farm of R. H. Christensen, June 1932,” as well as “Item 1-D-125: Irrigated pasture, Levern, farm of R.H. Christensen, June 1932”. As far as I am aware, there is no Levern in Oregon, but it seems reasonable to assume that this is a misspelling of Laverne. I thought it possible that R.H. Christensen owned several pieces of land in Coos County, and took note of this discovery to refer back to later. 

Next, I searched maps collections that might reveal land ownership, including Metsker’s Atlases of Oregon Counties, 1929-1988. Unfortunately, the three atlases of Coos County in this collection were dated 1941, 1958, and 1975. Because the initial item was dated 1933, I feared that these atlases were created a bit later than I hoped and may not contain the information I sought if Christensen hadn’t owned the farm into the 1940s. I still went ahead with my search and parsed through the 1941 atlas. Maps of Coos River did not show any land belonging to R.H. Christensen. I was disappointed, but given my earlier findings, went on to maps of Coquille River and to my surprise, found separate plots of land along the Coquille River to “R. H. and G. L. Christensen” on page 52 of the 1941 atlas. To practice due diligence, I also checked the 1958 atlas and found the same plots of land to be owned by “Gladys L. Christensen” 16 years later on page 53 of the 1958 atlas. By 1975, the land had changed hands.

The spelling of the last name “Christensen” seemed unique enough to me that I thought this not a coincidence. After many searches of “R.H. Christensen” and “Gladys Christensen” in obituary and newspaper databases, I finally found an obituary for a “Ralph H. Christensen” dated May 7, 1948. This obituary confirmed that Ralph Christensen had lived in Coos County and married Gladys Abbott in 1914. His primary residence was in Bandon, Oregon.

I thought it reasonable to assume that the Ralph and Gladys Christensen discussed in this obituary are, in fact, the leading characters in the story I have constructed so far. At this point, I believed that the evidence I had gathered pointed to two options: either the original photo of the Christensen farm in the Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin collection was mislabelled and instead of being a Coos River farm, it was a Coquille River farm, or that Ralph Christensen (or his family) owned multiple pieces of property in Coos County. 

Now, understanding that Bandon was a place of interest, I still sought to learn more about the land that Ralph and Gladys owned, and whether there truly was a Coos River farm attached to their name. This time, I turned to Google and searched for “‘Ralph Christensen’ Bandon”, and when that did not yield useful results, “‘R.H. Christensen’ Bandon”. 

The latter search resulted in an unexpected find. I came across a Bandon Historical Society newsletter from 2017 that featured an article titled, “Miraculous Rescue Story…”. While not what I thought I was looking for, it was here that I got a look into what Christensen’s character may have been. 

According to the newsletter, a man named Richard Howell visited the Bandon Historical Society Museum in August 2016, where he sought out the museum director. With her, he shared a Bandon Western World newspaper article titled “Infant Lost in Flood Found Alive”, dated February 4, 1937. The article explained that the Howell family had lived in a house built near the Christensen farm on Lowe Creek (a tributary of Coquille River, located between Coquille and Bandon, Oregon). The house was built in a canyon, the article reports, and below a 20-foot-tall dirt dam. The dam was used for irrigation purposes on the Christensen farm. 

In 1937, a heavy downpour resulted in a flood that destroyed the dam and swept away the Howells’ home in the middle of the night. In their journey to the main road through the flooded canyon, they lost hold of their three-month-old son. Fearing the worst, the family searched for the child, but to no avail. 

The remaining Howell family members (both parents and two children) arrived at the Christensen farm for help. The article reports that Ralph Christensen built a fire for the family before hurrying to the home of Maurice Ray, who was the superintendent of the Moore Mill and Lumber Company logging operations and the employer of Mr. Howell. The pair then ventured into the canyon, where they rather heroically found the baby trapped in an alder sapling. The child was still alive despite being lost for an hour in the flood.

Richard Howell, the museum visitor, revealed to the museum director that he was the infant in that story. He shared that after his rescue, he was taken back to the Christensen home. Howell and his wife had visited the museum with hopes of obtaining a better copy of the Western World article and to see if they might learn any more on the 1937 flood.

Howell’s story did not inform me of whether the Christensens owned property on Coos River, but it did confirm that they owned and resided on a farm along the Coquille River. Given that there is a record of their land ownership along the Coquille River but not on the Coos River in the 1940s, I am inclined to believe that the original item was mislabelled. Alternatively, the Christensens may have owned property on Coos River in the 1930s that was sold before the 1941 atlas was created. 

Although my initial question remains unanswered, this search was not fruitless. I discovered where the Christensen family lived in the early twentieth century, but more than that, a riveting tale involving Ralph Christensen and Richard Howell. If this work has taught me anything, it is that while factual information (like addresses and land ownership) are important, the human stories that these facts inform are the true gems of the historical record. 

This post was written by Grace Knutsen. Grace is a student archivist at Special Collections and Archives Research Center. She is an Oregon State alumna and Master of Library and Information Science student.

I began working at SCARC in October 2023, during my first term at OSU. Now that I have spent a little over a year as a Student Archivist, I am able to look back and reflect on my experiences so far. When I applied to work at SCARC, I didn’t really know what an archive was, but I was excited about working in a library. My grandma was a school librarian, and I’ve always been passionate about history, so it just felt right. I don’t really remember what I expected my work to look like, but the first few months were a whirlwind. There were so many procedures and tasks to keep in mind as I began to learn how to assist researchers. My first attempt at paging books took me over an hour! But even as I needed to stop and ask for help at every turn, I was already having a lot of fun. Every day, I interact with deeply interesting historical materials, even when my task is something simple like reshelving a book. Experiencing this for the first time made me feel certain that being a student archivist was a good fit.

My first project was re-foldering Student Academic Records (SARs). I found the work almost meditative, and it was a great fit because I was new to campus and trying to find my place. Seeing the faces and stories of thousands of students who came before me was a meaningful experience and helped me feel more connected to OSU. When I held each person’s paperwork in my hands, it was like I was sitting there with them. As I transferred documents and copied name after name, I got a brief look into their aspirations, interests, and challenges. It was particularly interesting to see women who pursued non-traditional professions, the few Black students, and people who struggled academically but managed to stick it out and get their degrees. Through these individuals’ triumphs and losses, I was able to put my college experiences into perspective, and think about how much has changed in the last 70 years. Working with SARs was greatly moving, and I was a little sad to pass the project on to our newest Student Archivist. Despite this, it’s exciting to move on to more complex projects using the skills I have developed.

Another big project last year was updating the OSU Buildings LibGuide, which also helped me familiarize myself with campus and OSU history. I contributed to pages for over a hundred buildings. Now I feel that I could give an overly in-depth historical tour! I discovered that once I have a project, I tend to laser focus on getting it done, and it can be hard to balance projects with day-to-day collection management tasks. Being able to redirect my attention and keep all the different plates spinning is something I have made a lot of progress on this year. 

I’ve also been able to utilize SCARC materials in my coursework. Last term, I took SOC 360: Population Trends and Policy. For my final paper, I examined publications from Zero Population Growth (ZPG), an organization that was founded in the late 1960s and advocated for controlling population growth. I identified several articles that discussed suburban sprawl, and used them to frame land use planning discourse in the 1970s. ZPG had lots of praise for Oregon’s Senate Bill 100, which established a land use planning scheme for Oregon with 19 goals, such as protecting agricultural lands and ensuring affordable housing. Both the ZPG articles and debates around S.B. 100 show a desire to maintain the status quo and protect the “character” of neighborhoods. I argue this helps explain why S.B. 100 has been far less effective at addressing housing affordability than its other goals. The historical sources I accessed through SCARC contributed significantly to my paper. Very little information about ZPG is available online, and I was able to bring a unique perspective and story to the project through archival research. It was an interesting experience to switch roles and do research myself instead of facilitating research for others! 

When I first started at SCARC, I couldn’t imagine ever managing to remember all the protocols, or even what areas we collect materials in. A little over a year in, I feel confident in my understanding, and I am more comfortable in my interactions with patrons. I’m excited to continue learning in this supportive environment. My new project, processing photographs from News and Communication Services, is definitely pushing me out of my comfort zone, and I’m learning a lot. I anticipate this being a time-consuming project, but even though the finish line is far away, I’m feeling motivated to get there and see what comes next!

This post is contributed by Margot Pullen. She is a student archivist at the Special Collections and Archives Research Center. She studies public policy and history.

As a student archivist, one of my primary projects is writing biographies for the more than one thousand individuals listed in the News and Communication Services Records. These individuals are primarily faculty and staff who were associated with Oregon State between 1940 and 2004. Oftentimes, the collection only holds an administrative document related to the individual. If I’m lucky, there might also be a CV or an article related to their professional work. While I do perform additional research to fill out a brief biography meant to communicate their birthdate, academic and professional history, and association with Oregon State, as well as to differentiate individuals with the same name, I’m still often left with only a snapshot of their life. I wish I could write detailed life stories for each individual in this collection, but alas, I am limited by time. 

Margaret Palen is an example of the many individuals I wish to learn more about. The News and Communication Services Records hold two newspaper clippings related to her suspension and eventual termination from Oregon State in the 1970s. Reading these, I wished to understand her life beyond these events as well as share her professional accomplishments. As much as this blog post is about Palen, it is also about the privilege of doing the research and filling in the historical record. 

Who was Margaret Krug Palen, and what more can we learn about her life? 

Margaret L. Palen (née Krug) was born on May 14, 1931, in Iowa. She attended Iowa State College (now Iowa State University), where she earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics in 1952. After graduating, Palen was a textile chemist for one year before becoming a home extension agent in Iowa from 1953 until 1955. That year, she joined the Oregon State staff as a county extension agent for 4-H. She resigned in 1957 after her marriage to become a homemaker, working temporarily from 1958 to 1959 to aid Marion County as an extension agent. According to Palen’s employment records, her supervisors found her work to be effective and of quality. Palen returned to Oregon State in 1966, becoming a home economics extension agent in Tillamook County. She also became a master’s student at Oregon State in the early 1970s.

Despite her tenured status, Palen was suspended, then terminated, from her job in 1972 due to ten charges filed by Lee Kolmer, head of the Cooperative Extension Service. From August-September 1972, a five-person committee conducted hearings to evaluate Kolmer’s complaints, although the members of that committee are unknown. 

During these hearings, several witnesses appeared before the committee. Among them were a number of Tillamook County residents who spoke in favor of Palen’s work in their community. Even so, the committee found four of the charges to be proven and just cause for dismissal. 

In October 1972, the faculty committee recommended that the matter would be best resolved by termination. Upon hearing this decision, OSU President Robert MacVicar fired Palen. This decision is included in the article, “Tenured Assistant Terminated” published by the Corvallis Gazette Times on December 21, 1972.

This is where the story ends in SCARC’s holdings. However, Oregon court records indicate that Palen did not succeed in protesting her suspension before the faculty hearing committee. In 1974, she appealed via the Oregon Court of Appeals, where the Board maintained that the university had just cause for dismissal. While we do not know the original seven charges, we do know these four because they were discussed in this case. They include that:

• Palen reportedly made unsupported claims of improper and sometimes criminal conduct on the part of University administrators 
• Palen reportedly was unwilling to cooperate with 4-H and Youth staff and leaders (that is to say, failing to adequately perform her responsibilities to the Tillamook County 4-H program)
• Palen reportedly was unwilling to live in Tillamook County, and while the Extension Service did not present evidence of a formal written policy regarding place of residence, “Mrs. Palen had been informed of the desirability and necessity of living near her place of employment”
• Palen reportedly refused to respond to direction from and provide a schedule of her activities to her County Chairman, claiming that she was on special assignment and not required to report to the Chairman

The Oregon Court of Appeals found the first and last charges and last “could properly conclude that petitioner’s conduct constituted cause for termination”. In the second, the Oregon Board of Education was found erred. In the third, the charge could not be sustained “because it was not proven to be one of the petitioner’s responsibilities to do so”. Therefore, the OSU president’s decision to fire Palen was upheld. 

While only listed as a staff member in Oregon State General Catalogs until the 1972-73 academic year, Palen’s name is listed in the 1974 Oregon State commencement program as a Master of Science in Education recipient (she likely graduated in Fall 1973, causing her to be listed in the 1974 program, because other documents in Oregon Digital list her graduating class as the Class of ‘73). That is to say, it appears that she still graduated from Oregon State after her termination. 

It’s difficult to trace the next decade of Palen’s life. She likely continued her career in community-oriented work outside of Oregon State. She also likely continued to raise and support her family. It’s possible that she spent some time traveling with her husband, Kenneth Palen, as his obituary states that the couple traveled to every continent and seventy-five countries of the world – an endeavor that would certainly take time to complete. 

A simple internet search of Palen’s name reveals that in the 1980s, she began her writing career. Inspired by her German family and her husband’s Scottish family’s immigration to Iowa, she authored Genealogical Research Guide to Germany in 1988, a guide for those individuals interested in tracing their ancestry. She would go on to write three related works: German Settlers of Iowa: Their Descendants and European Ancestors in 1994, Genealogical Guide to Tracing Ancestors in Germany in 1995, and Germany and Scotland Immigrants to Iowa in 2019. 

Searches in Oregon Digital reveal that Palen also continued her extension work as a volunteer executive with the International Executive Services Corporation. In 1996, she returned from a trip to Ghana, where she designed a clothing construction course for the African Women Entrepreneurial Training Centre. An image from this trip was even featured in the Oregon Stater in 1996. 

In 1999, she worked with the US Agency for International Development in Mozambique, featured in that year’s Oregon Stater. 

In both editions, Palen is referred to by her graduating class of 1973 and without reference to her prior employment with the university. She also continued international extension work to improve food production, textiles, and clothing, through travel to countries including Ghana, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Belarus, Bolivia, and Jamaica, described in her 2018 book A Different World: My Life and Making a Difference in the World.

When I first stumbled upon Palen’s name, I feared that she would only be remembered incompletely. Her story illustrates how important it is to paint full pictures of individuals in history, and how sometimes, preservation can be biased. Simply because the News and Communication Services Records only contains materials related to her termination, an individual utilizing these records might have a partial view of Palen. Further research shows that her dismissal from Oregon State did not stop her from continuing her career in extension work. Palen continued home economics work internationally for several decades, even earning recognition for this work from her alma mater and previous employer. It also shows other career-oriented pursuits, writing four books on the topic of genealogy and a fifth on her own life and work. 

~ Grace Knutsen

Grace Knutsen is a student archivist at Special Collections and Archives Research Center. She is an Oregon State alumna and Master of Library and Information Science student.