Director

Other than fur trappers, the first white man to enter our valley was Catholic missionary Father Respari in the 1850s. He lived among the Wenatchi Indians for twenty years teaching them his religion and living with them along the stream now called Mission Creek south of Cashmere. He was succeeded in the 1870s by Jesuit missionary Father Urban Grassi who built the St. Francis Xavier in 1873. In 1888 the log structure was replaced by a frame building which stood until 1915. A fire destroyed the building, and this replica was built for the museum by volunteers of St. Francis Catholic Church in Cashmere. It features a pump organ which is played for the Sunday service at our annual Apple Days Celebration each October. Several Weddings have been performed in the village with this church as the setting for the ceremony.

Mission Church

The Cashmere Museum and Pioneer Village‘s mission is to collect and preserve the natural and cultural history of our local region. The Chelan County Historical Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that operates the Cashmere Museum &amp; Pioneer Village, began in 1955 as a collaborative effort between local collector Willis Carey and local businesses, led by John McDonald and the Cashmere Chamber of Commerce. Carey was terminally ill with cancer and wanted his large personal collection of Native American artifacts, historical relics, antiques, and curious, famous throughout Central Washington, to be displayed together and preserved for posterity. The community leaders and citizens of Cashmere agreed.Incorporated in 1956, the building opened in 1959 housing and highlighting Carey’s renown collection, and what would become known as the Pioneer Village acquired its first structures, the Blacksmith shop and Mission church. Ultimately growing to include 20 original structures, the Pioneer Village showcases a carefully restored Great Northern Railway caboose and a one room schoolhouse, originally located in Brender Canyon. Additionally, in 2007, the Russell S. Congdon collection of ancient art and artifacts, sourced from archaeological sites on the Mid-Columbia, was donated to the museum and is now housed in the Archaeology Wing.Developed by, for, and in conjunction with the community, the Cashmere Museum &amp; Pioneer Village seeks to engage, educate, and entertain visitors both local and international. Hundreds of volunteers have worked thousands of hours to make this possible, growing the Cashmere Museum and Pioneer Village into a must-see museum in Central Washington. The building is now over 13,000 square feet with two floors of thoughtfully curated Native American objects, Pioneer artifacts, geological specimens, taxidermy, and ornithology. The cabins in the Pioneer Village are furnished with antiques from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Cashmere Museum and Pioneer Village collects and preserves the natural and cultural history of our local region. Exhibits cover Native American objects, Pioneer artifacts, geological specimens, taxidermy, and ornithology. The Pioneer Village consists of 20 original structures from the area and are furnished with antiques from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

You are entering the Carey room named for local resident Willis Carey. Mr. Carey was a businessman in Cashmere in the early 1900s and was a friend to the local Indians. They traded with Mr. Carey and often paid him or gifted him with tools, needed clothes, and household items. In 1955, Mr. Kerry was suffering from cancer and is it progressed he was distressed about what would happen to his collection when he died. John McDonald was head of the Cashmere Chamber of Commerce at that time, and he organized a committee to explore building a museum to house the Carey collection. The Cashmere community provided funds and construction skills to make the museum a reality. Mr. Carey died knowing his artifacts would be preserved and shared with the public. We welcome you to Mr. Carey’s collection.

Carey Wing

Walter Graham was born in rural Illinois in 1903. As a child he preferred animals and scenery as the subjects of his drawings and doodling. He attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and became a book illustrator for a national publisher. In 1939 he helped form a commercial art studio in Chicago and during the summers would travel to Wyoming and Montana to paint and sketch. In 1950 he decided to become a full-time Western artist. After visiting his sister in Wenatchee he consider this area a veritable artists paradise. He moved here and earned commissions for painting portraits murals and creating sculptures. Mr. Graham was a prolific painter and left a large collection of are upon his death in May of 2000 at the age of 97. He did not believe in the print market and so all of his paintings are original he is best known for his Western landscapes and wildlife. His popular horsepower mural is 35 ft wide and 16 ft high and portrays a cascade of horses falling through blue-green water and bubbling into a force of white stallions at the base of the dam. Graham’s attention to shadow and form brings the images to life. The horses appear to jump off the surface of the canvas and give true meaning to the term horsepower.

Walter Graham

I am Ieetum better-known by my white man's name Celia Ann. My mother died when I was two, so I was raised by my grandparents John and Ellen Harmelt. Grandfather was the last chief for the Wenatchee Tribe, and they raised in their cabin up Nahahum Canyon. Grandmother taught me the arts of basket weaving and making beaded bags. Many years ago I demonstrated my beading talents right here at the Museum.

Celia Ann Dick

My name is Missytwa but the white man calls me Old Molly. I live year-round in my tepee up Olalla Canyon on my land which was white man's allotment. I never married. White man not keep promises made in Treaty of 1855. I give speeches on Main Street in Cashmere, and I tell people “White man no good, stole our country, bring whiskey, and poison our people.” Everybody just laughs.

Missytwa was a local Indian woman known as Old Molly. She was a renowned basket weaver. In this display you can see that one of her baskets was so tight she could boil water in it. Notice the scorch marks from the fire on the bottom of the basket.

Missytwa

See this collection of what we might call strange-looking weeds? The Indian tribes recognize these as parts of their daily diet and living habits. This one is Indian celery and the chief's granddaughter Ieetum told the story of how her grandparents both smoked and they would mix their tobacco half and half with kinnikinnick and then throw in some wild celery seed. Itum herself said, “I don't know what the white man calls it, but it grows up Nahahum Canyon and in April and early May I used to just about live on wild celery seed.

How would you prepare food for storage to use several months from now if you didn't have a refrigerator, canned goods, or grocery store down the road? The Plateau Indians were fishermen and would preserve fish by using a sharp-edged stone to cut it into pieces. They put these fish pieces on a rack of green sticks over a low fire until the fish with dried. The dried fish could be stored for several months. Roots were dug from the ground with a digging stick made of hardened wood, bone, or horns. The roots were sun dried and pounded into a flour. Jerky was with made from deer, elk, or goat meat cut into thin strips and laid out on flat rocks in the sun or near a fire to dehydrate. Berries would be picked and dried in the sun before storing and then eaten is dried fruit or pounded together with jerky powder and fat to make pemmican, an energy bar that would store for a year.

Native American Foods

Life in America in 1900Only 3% of American homes had electricity.Only 1/3 of American homes had running water, and only half of those had flush toilets.Most people lived within a mile of where they worked and depended on walking as transportation. One household in five owned a horse.Life expectancy at birth was 47 years, and for every 100 babies born, 14 died in their first year.The average adult had an 8th grade education and only 7% of students completed high school.A typical man's on-the-job work week consisted of 60 hours of labor spread over 6 days. Pensions were rare.Women made up 18% of the paid work force. They worked in fields like textiles, apparel, shoes, and canning - jobs which paid according to how much you produced.Although automobiles moved twice as fast as horses, only 8,000 cars and 10 miles of paved roads existed in 1900. By 1906, 15 states had speed limits of 20 miles per hour.New inventions included phonographs, light bulbs, typewriters, machine guns, telegraphs, the Eiffel tower, microphones, and aspirin.

Welcome to our Pioneer Village. The cabins in this village are original to the area, with the exception of the Mission Church which is a replica. The cabins were donated by individuals or families shortly after the Carey Museum was built. The cabins have been given new identities as part of the Pioneer Village and are filled with furnishings original to the 1880's. Each cabin had to be taken apart, the logs numbered, and then reassembled after being moved to the museum grounds. Cashmere Explorer Post #88 and the Volunteer Fire Department were instrumental in getting the cabins moved and rebuilt.

Pioneer Village

This one room log schoolhouse was built in 1886 by David Treadwell as Cashmere's first school. It was located at the head of Brender Canyon just West of Cashmere. Sixteen students attended the first year. The cabin was funded and built by the families who felt the need for a school. There was no official school board. The school bell which was used to signal the beginning of the school day came from the Olalla School in Olalla Canyon, Cashmere. This building was moved to its present site in 1967.

The school had no electricity or water. The room was heated by a wood stove, which made it warmer for those sitting close by, but not so much for those in the back. The older boys provided chopped wood for the stove and also toted buckets of water from the river for drinking. Bathrooms were not inside the school, and were called "outhouses". The students wrote with chalk on slate boards or on paper with in and quill pens made from feathers. Lunches were brought from home, packed in knapsacks or empty lard pails. They might consist of a hard boiled egg, cold potato, or leftover biscuit. Teachers could earn up to $50 a month and were housed with the families of their students as part of their pay - called room and board.

School

In the 1920's this two-person outhouse was the center of a lawsuit and jury trial when Mr. Herriot of Wenatchee accused rancher, Mr. Hart, of stealing the building and moving it to his own property. Mr. Herriot sought to recover the value of the building estimated by him at $3.00. Mr. Hart then countersued for $99.99 to cover attorney’s fees and loss of enjoyment of using the building. After listening for 3 hours to almost 20 witnesses, the jury deliberated for 10 minutes and decided Mr. Hart was justified in removing the outhouse. They assessed court costs to Mr. Herriot and ignored Mr. Hart's request for damages.

Outhouse

In addition to providing shaves and haircuts for men, at one time barbers also performed surgery and tooth extractions. It was known that blood carried disease through the body, so it made sense to heal a person by getting the blood out of the body. Bleeding a patient or applying leeches to the skin to suck blood from the patient was a cure all for everything from a stomachache to a herniated disc. The red and white pole outside barbers’ shops originally advertised this service. Symbolically, the red represented blood and white represented bandages. The original barber pole had a brass wash basin at the top representing the vessel in which leeches were kept. The pole itself represents the staff that the patient gripped during procedures to encourage blood flow. This building was moved from Leavenworth and restored by the Cashmere Explorer Post #88. Its furnishings are from frontier day barber shops of Leavenworth and Cashmere.

Barber Shop

The General Store was the hub of the community. Notice the whitewashed interior, the coffee mill, cracker barrel, and the pot-bellied stove. The general store was a gathering place for the community and the people could trade for their goods by bringing in things the store could sell to other people such as eggs, candles, and jams. Notice the long saw on the wall. This is a 2-man cross arm saw that pioneer men used to fell huge trees. Beside the saw is a broad ax that was used to remove the bark and branches.The metal pantry sitting under the saws was used by a shepherd living on Blewett Pass until the early 1980's. He had a covered wagon for his movable camp. The pantry held kerosene, flour, sugar, and spices. The kerosene stove by the door was the first camp stove in this area. Notice the rare glassoven. This cabin was built in 1896 by Archie Smith in Dryden and served as his family home for his wife and 4 children until 1912.

General Store

This sturdy two story log home was built in 1888 near Monitor by Mr. and Mrs. George Richardson. Fir logs were cut at Horse Lake above Wenatchee and skidded miles to the homesite. The logs were cut square with a broadaxe, and the corners dovetailed to fit tightly together. Cedar logs were cut into sections, then split into shakes for the roof. Mud or clay from riverbanks was used to fill the gaps between the logs to keep out wind, bugs, and snakes.This cabin was home to 10 children and grandma, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Richardson. The children slept upstairs while mom, dad, the new baby, and grandma slept downstairs.In the cabin kitchen there is a milk separator, used to sort milk from cream, and a butter churn. But there is no refrigerator. Food was kept cold in an icehouse, a running stream, or a root cellar under the house. The cabin was taken apart and moved from the original site in 1961.

Richardson Cabin

Leather could be used to make saddles, harnesses, chaps, boots, and shoes. It was also used to repair these same goods. Our shop houses a variety of items from the 1800s.This cabin was originally part of the mining town of Blewett and was moved to our Village in 1959 when Blewett was eliminated by a state highway.As you tour the Village, notice how each cabin differs in construction. The logs are notched according to the tools available to the builder, the size and shape of the logs or tradition of the builder's background. "Saddle" notching was popular for round logs and when only an axe was available. The "Norwegian" notch or "Sheep's Head" notch is a style effective at maintaining slippage when the logs shrink from drying out. The "Dovetail" notch is used with squared off logs such as displayed at the Richardson Cabin.

Saddle Shop

This cabin was built in 1871 as a trading post in what is now Wenatchee. Two traders named Ingraham and McBride started the trading post but ran afoul with the federal government for selling whiskey to the Indians and had to leave town quickly. They sold their business to brothers David and Frank Freer and Samuel Miller, business partners who were looking for a new venture after discontinuing their freight packing business in Walla Walla. The Freers and Mr. Miller used their freighting expertise to pack goods from Ellensburg over the treacherous mountain trails to supply their store. Samuel Miller ran the day-to-day operations and eventually the trading post came to be the mail delivery location with letters addressed to "Millersburg". The small community was known as Millersburg until 1893 when it was incorporated as Wenatchee, taking the name of the Indian tribe living in the area. This cabin is considered the first original building in the Wenatchee Valley. The post office boxes inside the cabin came from the old post office in Chelan.

The establishment of a post office was one of the first goals of people in any settlement. The town of Cashmere was originally named "Mission" because of its beginning as a Catholic Indian Mission, notice the name above the door. However, there were other towns in the territory with the same name, and in order to reduce the confusion of getting the mail delivered to the correct town, the Post Office asked the towns to rename themselves. In 1903 local judge, James Chase, suggested our area resembled the beauty of the Kashmir Valley in India, and the town's name was changed to Cashmere (with an Americanized spelling) when it was incorporated.

Post Office

One of the first businesses started in a frontier town was the saloon. Men could have lunch, play checkers or cards, get a drink, or throw their bedrolls on the floor upstairs to spend the night.This cabin was built in 1886 on Badger Mountain above East Wenatchee as the home of Matthias Jacobsen. It was purchased in 1913 by Charles Weaver and was later used as the Weaver family home until 1951. The Weaver family donated the cabin to our museum in 1973.

Buckhorn Saloon

Every new settlement in the West had to have its own jail to hold drunks while they sobered up and law breakers waiting for trial. Trial dates were irregular as it might take weeks for a traveling judge to make an appearance. The doors, bars, and bunks in our facility are from the old Cashmere jail where they were used until 1970.This cabin was built near Lake Wenatchee by a horse thief from Wisconsin who was running from the law and sought a secluded place to hide out. He lived there peacefully for years. The abandoned cabin was donated by Harriet Bullitt when she bought the property. The jail is named in honor of Tom Price, who was never a sheriff, but in 1979 organized the group who perform shoot outs and mock robberies in the Village for Apple Days. After Mr. Price died in 1999, his wife Polly continues the "shootout" tradition each year. A rose garden is planted to the side of the Jail in memory of their son Bill.

Sheriff's Office

Although life in the West was primitive, a millinery shop was a specialty store which provided women's headwear for festive occasions. You could guess a woman's social status by what she wore on her head. A farmer's wife might wear a straw hat or cloth bonnet. A banker's wife would wear something more fancy decorated with a flower or feather. But all women enjoyed wearing an attractive "Sunday" best hat to boost their morale.Do you notice a difference between this cabin and the others in the Village? This cabin does not have mud "chinking" between the logs. Each log has been filled with a small quarter round piece of wood. This type of finish does not require re-chinking every year, and it gives the cabin a different look while keeping the bugs and breezes out.

Millinery Shop

This is where the weekly newspaper would have been printed, with type set by hand. The press inside the cabin dates to the early 1900s. Type is stored in the drawers along the wall.Notice the Black walnut tree next to the Print Shop. The ripe walnuts can be soaked in a special sauce that leaches the Black color and provides a natural printing ink or wood stain.

Print Shop

James Weythman and Deke Brown were the first white settlers in the Monitor area was was originally called Browns Flat. They each cleared land for ranching and each built rough log cabins to serve as shelters. When James asked Elizabeth from Ellensburg to marry him, he wanted something larger and better for his new bride. This is the home he added to his cabin in 1891. It features sawed lumber on a frame structure called board and batten. After their wedding in Ellensburg, James and Elizabeth loaded up a bobsled with her trousseau and made their way to the summit of Colockum Pass. At the summit they transferred from the sled to a wagon for the steep descent to the valley floor. Their load was an unusually large one consisting of a bedroom suite, an organ, the first sewing machine to come to the area, and two turkeys. This was Elizabeth's first time to visit her husband's home. After settling in, she made friends with the women of the Indian Village across the river. As time went by, they helped her with the birth of her children, and she shared the wonders of her sewing machine with them.This is the only building that was moved to the Village intact without being taken apart. It was donated by the Weythman family in 1974 and includes original furnishings.

Weythman Cabin

Having a real doctor or dentist in your town was a definite upgrade from using the local barber for treatment. Doctors often traveled by horse and buggy to the home where they were needed. There were no telephones, so many rural pioneers died from injuries and illnesses before the doctor arrived. Without x-rays, broken bones were often badly set and the patient was left crippled. Doctors were dedicated to helping people, and he could be called at any hour.This cabin was built along Mission Creek in 1890 by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Slawson as their home. The dental equipment is from the office of Dr. Hutchinson, a pioneer dentist in Wenatchee. Notice the drill is powered by a foot pump. The doctor's office was furnished by physicians of Chelan County. The wheelchair on display is one of the first of its kind.

Dr/Dentist Office 

As each settlement grew, especially if it was on a train route, there was need for a hotel to accommodate the weary traveler and occasional salesman. This was a place to freshen up and get a hot meal. The bowl and pitcher on the dresser would be the sink to wash in. The chamber pot under the bed was used to avoid walking to the outhouse in the dark night. The open bedroom upstairs offered no privacy for the women and children who slept there. Men would sleep upstairs at the saloon.This cabin was originally built in 1898 in Cashmere by George Grant who owned a sawmill on Mission Creek and cut all the lumber from trees on his property.

Mission Hotel

A Blacksmith is a person who creates objects from wrought iron or steel using tools to hammer, bend, and cut heated metal. A Blacksmith is different from a whitesmith who works with cold soft metal such as tin and pewter. Blacksmiths produce objects such as tools, agricultural implements, cooking utensils, and weapons. They can also form horseshoes, but become a farrier when fitting those shoes. Local pioneer Blacksmith Fred Burgess donated the tools on display.This structure was built in 1889 near Dryden by John Lanham and was first used as a tool shed. During the construction of the Great Northern Railroad in 1891, it was actually used as a Blacksmith shop. Later the building served as a chicken house, a store, and a garage. It was donated in 1960 by Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Hall.

Blacksmith Shop

This cabin was built in 1872 as a home by Samuel C. Miller, the first permanent white settler in the Wenatchee Valley. He and his friend Frank Freer operated the trading post in Millersburg which later became the City of Wenatchee. In 1896, this cabin was purchased by the Horan Family, and in 1898 was the birthplace of Walt Horan who later became a Congressman representing Chelan County from 1943 to 1965.This cabin was disassembled, transported, and rebuilt through the efforts of Cashmere Explorer Post #88, and has been furnished by members of the Horan family.

The Horan Cabin

The mine portal is built of timers from the original gold mines at the town of Blewett in the Wenatchee Mountains. The track and ore cars are original to the mines also. Listen and you can hear the miners working in the shaft. A story from the book Ghosts of Blewett, by Bud Fritz tells that a Scotsman was the mining superintendent in 1897."It was customary for him to set his workers to dig 100 feet of tunnel and leave them until the work was completed. When he got called back, he would take his 100 ft long measuring tape (the only one in camp), measure the footage, and pay off the workers. After twenty years of using that same tape, a new superintendent taking over discovered that someone had cut off 10 feet between the 40 and 50 foot mark, and neatly spliced it together. When word of that trick got around camp, the canyon resounded with the laughs of hard-working miners".

Mine Portal

This assay office was built in 1879 at the gold mining site of Blewett where miners could bring ore samples to determine their value. The assayer also tested the residue from the concentrators at the mill to determine the amount of gold per ton of ore being recovered. After the ore had been crushed and concentrated, the mercury was added to the concentrates, dissolving the gold and forming a compound. The concentrates were then smelted to separate the mercury from the gold. The mercury would be distilled for reuse, and the gold melted into bars and sold.In those days, gold was worth less than $8.00 per ounce. Almost $40 million in gold passed through this office. Inside the assay office we have displayed a variety of ore and rocks that are found in this area, plus a collection of miner and assay equipment.

Cashmere Museum and Pioneer Village

Mission Church

Introduction