I love new projects that celebrate new collections! Last Friday, August 16, we released nearly 5,000 digital images of the Siuslaw National Forest (SNF), which date from 1908 when Siuslaw was first established as a national forest to the present. A highlight of the collection is a series of photographs taken by Corydon Cronk during his time as an assistant ranger on the forest in 1910-1911.

Aerial Central coast N. from Cape Perpetua

Kevin Bruce, SNF Heritage Resource Program manager, approached Larry Landis and Ruth Vondracek nearly a year ago with the exciting proposal to create the Siuslaw National Forest Collection. The collection represents the first step in a long-ranging joint project between the SNF and the OSU Libraries and Press’ Center for Digital Scholarship and Special Collections & Archives Research Center.

Heritage Resource Program manager Kevin Bruce says

“Ranging from early 20th-century homesteading activities to modern stream restoration efforts, the collection includes a wide array of topics that reflect the changing management, landscapes, and people on the Siuslaw National Forest.”

Making forest history more publicly accessible is the goal of the project, and this project also involved the public. The images were digitized and described by volunteers in the Passport in Time Program, a volunteer archaeology and historic preservation program of the U.S. Forest Service. Under the supervision of former Siuslaw National Forest Heritage Program manager Phyllis Steeves, volunteers scanned images over the course of a decade, and even developed the database to store the associated information. Maura Valentino, from the OSULP Center for Digital Scholarship played a significant role in making the images available as through the OSULP digital collections.

See the Siuslaw National Forest Collection.

Read the OSU press release.

Enjoy!