KINSMAN FOUNDATION ENABLES US TO SAVE MILL HISTORIES

Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation is currently focused on saving the oral history of mill work in West Linn during the Crown Zellerbach era, from 1928-1986.  Thanks to a generous grant from the Kinsman Foundation, our first documentary on mill work was completed in the fall of 2006 and is now available to library patrons in communities around Oregon, as well as through purchase.

We are deeply indebted to the retired employees of Crown Zellerbach International, West Linn Division, both union and management, for telling their stories and allowing us to scan their personal photos for use in the project.  The first product of our 32 hours of interviews conducted with millworkers is two hours in length and ran on Clackamas County's Cable Television channel and the CAN network throughout the summer of 2007. 

Thanks to another grant from the Kinsman Foundation, we completed the second movie, one hour in length, in January, 2008.  "Friends, Fish and $1.09 an Hour' focuses on topics such as fishing in the mill that were not included in "Grindstones, Boomsticks, Tattletales and Nips."

Our greater goal is to use the 17 personal interviews/histories preserved by this video project as the starting point for a Library of Profiles of Millwork, in which we would transcribe the complete original interviews, index them for industrial and sociological researchers and print uses, and continue to gather information by interviewing more individuals about both Oregon City and West Linn millwork.

FOUNDATION SUPPORT CONTINUES

Thanks to a $3,500 grant from the Oregon Cultural Trust we are beginning the task of transcribing the original 17 interviews. for researchers. In addition, a $4,500 Juan Young Trust grant is helping us create a packet of teaching guides and curriculum materials for the West Linn- Wilsonville School District to make this valuable local history available to students and instructors through the districts' digital library.