Maxville, history center win parks grants

Published 7:00 am Sunday, July 10, 2022

WALLOWA COUNTY — Two sites in Wallowa County are soon to be the recipients of grants from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, it was announced Friday, July 1.

The Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center in Joseph requested and received a $10,000 grant, with $10,000 matching in in-kind support and funds raised to get the Maxville site east of Wallowa on the National Register of Historic Places. The money will help cover the cost of the nomination process.

Gwendolyn Trice, executive director of the center, said Wednesday, July 6, that the grant should arrive any day. It will pay for the writer of the nomination to the national register, she said.

The center has finally purchased the 240-acre site that includes Maxville. Trice said the center closed on the site June 10.

Maxville, which existed as a company logging town from 1923-33, was at one time the largest town in Wallowa County, according to the Maxville website. It was home to African American loggers at a time when Oregon’s constitution included a provision excluding Blacks from the state. Maxville had a population of about 400 residents, 40 to 60 of them African American, the website says.

Trice’s father, grandfather, uncles and cousins came from Arkansas to work as loggers in Maxville.

She said the main lodge has been dismantled and will be rebuilt at the site in the spring, which will be the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Maxville.

“We’ve been working on it and now it’s a reality,” she said.

Trice said archaeological students from around the region have been working on the site before any reconstruction work is done.

“We’re making sure were doing the due diligence before we rebuild,” she said. “We want to honor all the (archaeological) processes before we turn any soil.”

In addition to the residents of the logging town, archaeology connected to the Nez Perce and Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, which were the original inhabitants of the area, also is being considered.

In addition to Maxville, the Wallowa History Center in Wallowa requested and received a $20,000 grant to repair the exterior of the old ranger’s office at the historical Bear-Sleds Ranger Station in Wallowa. The office now hosts the history center. The center also will have $22,250 in matching funds.

No one was available at the center to discuss the grant.

The two were among 14 applicants from across the state that combined requested $215,466, received $200,000 and had $366,830 in matching funds.

For more about the grant program, visit www.oregonheritage.org or contact Kuri Gill at Kuri.gill@oprd.oregon.gov or 503-986-0685.