Center to tell Maxville story

All the way from historic Maxville, to Wallowa to the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center, this logger's dwelling will be located and restored to recreate the living conditions of the timber workers in the early 1900's. Photo/RON OSTERLOH

A group including Jeff Oveson of the Grande Ronde Watershed; Bobbi Conner, director of the Tamastlikt Institute in Umatilla County; Steve McClure, Union County commissioner; Mary Hawkins, Wallowa City Council member; Anne and Luis Roduiguez, Patrice Mays and Rhonda Sater, all of whom have relatives who lived in Maxville; and Jan Baker of Enterprise met recently to set priorities, discuss sources of funding and begin to formulate a governing board.

Trice, who has family connections to Maxville, said several locations within the city of Wallowa have been researched as possible sites for the interpretive center. The group has acquired an historic boxcar from Camp Elkanah in Union County, which will be fully restored. The train car is symbolic of the importance of the railroad to the growth of Maxville, and of the houses the black timber workers lived in that were built to fit onto a flatcar; they were 50 feet long and 13 feet wide.

Another recent acquisition to the interpretive center project is one of the small wooden houses lived in by the families of the white timber workers in Maxville.

The house was donated by Nancy Trump, wife of the late Charlie Trump, who grew up in Promise, near Maxville. Charlie obtained the house to use for storage after the town of Maxville closed down in 1933.

Trice said that restoring the little house will help visitors experience the life of the early loggers in the little-known town of Maxville, which was established in 1923 and named after the Palmer Lumber Co. superintendent J.D. McMillan. It was called Mac’s Village, or Maxville. Around 1924 logging increased in the lower Wallowa Valley and white and black laborers came to take advantage of the expanding job opportunities.

“Telling the story of the logging and timber industry is the story of Maxville. The interpretive center will be a great platform for this American story,” Trice said.

The heritage project will continue to seek any artifacts related to the railways, the logging industry and community life in Maxville. A high priority of the project, Trice said, is to record the oral histories of surviving Maxville families and those with first or second generation information.

“We are looking for descendants of Maxville residents, anyone who might have done business in Maxville or with the people there, anyone who was connected with Maxville and might have information to share. We are very interested in any artifacts people can show us and especially photographs of the town or surrounding area,” Trice said.

An interactive website is currently under construction by SmartSolutions, which has donated its services and training for personnel to update the website as needed. An electronic newsletter and updates on the heritage project will be available at maxvileheritage.org within the next few weeks.

Gaining nonprofit status is also in process. The group has written grants under the auspices of the Friends of the Wallowa County Museum thus far. Trice said that many people in Wallowa County have volunteered to help with the project.

“I can’t thank everyone enough for their help, especially Mary Burroughs and Marilyn Hulse in Wallowa. We are still looking for volunteers as we go forward with the interpretive center,” she said.

Trice’s research on her family’s heritage and the history of Maxville is scheduled to be produced as a documentary by Oregon Public Broadcasting during the summer.