Since 1939 the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center has been gathering and educating people to celebrate and preserve the history, arts, sciences and rich diversity of the Wenatchee area and its people. through the preservation of the diverse history of the Wenatchee Valley. A variety of exhibits offer a glimpse into the past by recreating a typical setting from a selected era.
Ice Age Mystery - explores the ancient Native American Clovis culture and the excavation of a Clovis site discovered in East Wenatchee in 1987. It includes a display of artifacts including stone knives, scrapers, and bone tools recovered from the site.
Native People of the Columbia Plateau - highlights the day-to-day life and traditions of Native Americans in past centuries. Includes petroglyphs recovered from the shores of the Columbia River, trade goods, food items, beadwork and photographs.
Farm Shop - portrays a typical farm shop in the 1890's. It includes tools for working with leather, iron (blacksmithing) and wood. With a docent's help, tour groups can create a length of rope on a vintage rope-making machine.
Victorian House - recreates a small-town family home around the turn of the 20th century. Visitors step through the back door into a farm kitchen complete with functioning wood stove and hand pump at the sink. Passing through a more formal living room and bedroom, they emerge onto a Victorian front porch and Main Street, which features a print shop, bank, general store, vintage automobiles, and mural of Wenatchee Avenue in 1900.
Liberty Theater Pipe Organ - This beautiful, fully operational 1919 Wurlitzer pipe organ from a local movie theater was restored and installed in the museum's performance center in 1989. Curtains behind the organ open to view the full installation. Lobby hosts often demonstrate the organ and its sound effects such as sirens and horse hooves.
Great Northern Railway Diorama - recreates old train routes across the Cascade Mountains, and sends a model train chugging along narrow tracks, over trestles and through two historic tunnels. Accompanying displays include artifacts and information on the 1910 Wellington Avalanche and the 1974 Malaga Apple Yard explosion. A nearby depot waiting room and telegraph office complete the exhibit.
Home Address: Anywhere in the Air - illustrates
the "golden age of flight" with aviation pioneer and North
Central Washington native Clyde Pangborn. Photographs and artifacts
celebrate Pangborn's life and career, including his record-setting
adventure in 1931 when he and partner Hugh Herndon completed
the first non-stop, trans-Pacific flight from Sabishiro Beach,
Japan to Wenatchee, Washington.
Coyote's Corner - An interactive exhibit and play area which introduces children to three distinct eco-systems in the Wenatchee Valley. Visitors can walk along a painted river to discover a salmon's life cycle and play with a variety of animal puppets in a replica of a Ponderosa pine snag. Pressed specimens shrub-steppe wildflowers flank a large case with a diorama of the hidden life within and around a sagebrush plant.
Museum Gallery - The gallery's changing exhibits explore art, history and culture in North Central Washington and beyond. Click here for current and upcoming featured exhibits.
Apple Industry - This exhibit will reopen in the spring of 2008 with a new look. The exhibit chronicles the history of the Wenatchee apple industry: irrigation, cultivation, harvest, handling and marketing past and present. Highlights include a display of vintage apple box labels and an operational 1920s packing line with apple wiper, sorting table, and an extraordinary catapult-sizing machine.
Apple Theater - will reopen in the spring of 2008. The visitor-activated theater format makes it easy to view several short documentaries on regional history, including:
- Celebration: a 13-minute presentation combining vintage and contemporary images to trace the development of Washington's apple industry.
- Last Chance for Glory: An award-winning museum
production recounting the first successful non-stop, trans-Pacific
Flight from Japan to Wenatchee on October 5, 1931.
- Echoes of Yesterday: Filmed on location during
the construction of Grand Coulee Dam, the presentation
portrays the impact of the dam on the land and the people.
- A Time Comes: Documents the 1928 construction
of Rock Island Dam, the first dam on the Columbia River.
Historic Murals
- The Saga of Wenatchee: A WPA mural created in 1939 by Peggy Strong. This mural, original to the building, depicts the history of postal service in the region. It belongs to the people of the USA, and is catalogued by the Smithsonian.
- Anywhere Valley: A landscape portraying a typical
rural coulee vista in North Central Washington. Created
by renowned local muralist, the late Walter Graham.
- Steamboating on the Columbia: Depicts the Wenatchee
Boat Yard and the steamboat era on the Columbia River from
1892 to 1915. Painted by Walter Graham.
Source: www.wvmcc.org
