“New Horizons for Pacific Northwest History—A New Role in ECOLOGY”

In June 1930, Monterey marine biologist Ed Ricketts was photographed in the kelp bed at Port Townsend, Washington, by Jack Calvin–his co-author of “Between Pacific Tides” (1939). That photograph only recently opened the door to the realization that this revolutionary naturalist that brought Ecology into mainstream awareness had traveled extensively throughout the shoreline Pacific Northwest in the 1930s researching and developing that essential concept. Recognition for that role and importance of the Pacific Northwest is about to be celebrated as a new horizon in history, literature, ecology, and destination travel emerges through research.
The Pacific Northwest shorelines provided the rich and abundant sea life and conditions for the study of the relationships of marine organisms, their distribution and correlations in varying shoreline and tidepool conditions, exposure to wave shock, and other environment-dictated forces determining the new vision of life we recognize today as Ecology. An especially important location in the Ricketts’ decade of spring and summer research of the 1930s is the area around Hoodsport, on the Hood Canal. Its location is on early Highway 101 northward to Port Angeles on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, access to coastal British Columbia, Vancouver Island, and beyond. Hoodsport quickly became Ricketts’ headquarters and an annual location of immense scientific interest in the Hood Canal itself. The Hoodsport area today is a thriving but somewhat seasonal destination, renowned for its tranquility, summer cabins and comfortable resort-life, boating, fishing, clams, and oysters.
Somewhere on its changed shoreline is the site of a summer cabin which annually served as his base of PNW operations, as well as spring-summer home to his wife and young family. It is hoped that through on-going research its actual location can finally be determined and memorialized as a particularly important historic and ecological site. Its eventual discovery, as part of a new historical and ecological interest, could anchor a new cultural and eco-tourism destination identity to augment the many existing attractions to the Hood Canal.
Michael Kenneth Hemp, Monterey, California historian will present a historical photo and
archival PowerPoint presentation of the New Horizons for Pacific Northwest History at the
Mason County Historical Society Museum in Shelton, Washington, at 2:00 PM on Saturday, September 29th. Admission is free and open to the public.
Speaker’s short bio:
Michael Kenneth Hemp is Berkeley-born (1942) and a graduate of the University of California. In 1983 he created the non-profit Cannery Row Foundation (www.canneryrow.org) to research and preserve the history of Cannery Row, Monterey, California. He served as Executive Director and research historian and became President of the foundation in 2008. He has relocated to Gig Harbor, Washington, to connect his nearly 40 years of Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, and Western Flyer research, lectures, and publication to the Pacific Northwest. “CANNERY ROW, The History of John Steinbeck’s Old “Ocean View Avenue” has for decades been Monterey’s most popular history book—featuring archival historic photos of Monterey, its sardine fishing fleet, the Ed Ricketts ecological legacy, industrial and Steinbeck literary Cannery
Row, and the saga of Tacoma’s “Western Flyer” and its 1940 voyage to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. It is essential to understanding the many unrecognized and shared maritime and ecological legacies of the New Horizon for Pacific Northwest History. A book signing to follow the Shelton presentation. Discounted and signed Mason County Museum price: $20.00 will include tax.