Gwen Trice

Gwen Trice is in the process of putting the historic town of Maxville on the map of public consciousness – a project very close to her heart.

A videographer, Trice is working on what she calls The Maxville Project to record and preserve the histories of the old logging community of Maxville, north of Wallowa.

In the process, this Enterprise resident is also unearthing her own family’s roots and stories.

“They brought in mill and logging workers from all over the south,” said Trice. “My dad and granddad were in the first boxcar of loggers brought into the district.”

Not only is Trice filming and recording a documentary about Maxville, which is mostly known as a historic African-American town, but she has also enlisted numerous partners to set up a small Maxville museum and interpretive center. It will be housed in a boxcar formerly used by Camp Elkanah near Ukiah and the search is on to find the right site for it somewhere in Wallowa.

Trice said she wants to create a museum that says, “This is the community … this is what these people did.”

” I don’t want to make it to be about black and whitem” she said.

She envisions a Maxville Heritage Center that will attract history-minded visitors to Wallowa. She is especially interested in contacting descendents of Maxville’s residents. To contact her (e-mail, trice.g@gmail.com or 426-3545).

Trice has drawn the attention of Oregon Public Broadcasting, which has already started a documentary about Trice’s project.

In May, thanks to an Oregon Cultural Trust grant, Trice was able to travel to interview Maxville’s last surviving logger, 92-year-old Alvin Marsh Jr. of Lancaster, Texas.

Gwen Trice grew up in La Grande, graduating from high school there in 1976. She always loved Wallowa County, and often came to hike and backpack with friends. After high school, she moved to the Seattle area, where she settled in, but returned frequently to visit family in La Grande and spend time in the Wallowas.

Just a few years ago, however, she discovered that she had deep roots in the county she now calls home. Trice was attending the Tamkaliks Celebration in Wallowa when Promise-area resident Orvella Hafer told her about Maxville: “Your people are from up there.” Trice recalls her response: “Are you kidding me?”

“My dad (Lucky Trice) didn’t tell me this when I was a kid. He never once talked about Maxville,” she said.

Six years ago for the first time Trice attend the annual Promise Memorial Day reunion, an emotional experience where she was made to feel like part of an extended family, as people told her stories about her family in Maxville.

“I was so scared. I was the only brown face there,” she recalled. When she was introduced as “Lucky Trice’s daughter,” a murmur went through the gathering. “I stood there and cried. I got to meet my father …. My father was always 10 feet tall to me, but I didn’t know how big he was until then,” she said.

After leaving Maxville, Lucky Trice eventually became a businessman and civic leader in the La Grande. He was district commander of the American Legion, a member of Rotary and was awarded many times by the Isaak Walton League. In his 40s, during WW II, he served in the Air Force, though he didn’t get his pilot’s license until after the war. He was also known as an amateur boxer.

“We could do a book on his story,” his daughter said, indicating that someday she just might do that.

Trice now returns each year to renew those ties established at the Promise reunion, and also to record and preserve the stories she hears. For example, one woman told her about the time that Trice’s dad carried her husband out of the woods, and saved his life.

Trice became close friends with Wallowa’s late Charlie Trump, who grew up in Promise near Maxville. He told her, “I remember your dad when I was 17. Boy, your dad could really dance.” Trice said never knew her that about her father.

Trump’s widow, Nancy, is donating a storage shed – originally as used for housing in Maxville – to Trice’s project. Charlie had hauled it from Maxville when the town closed down in 1933 because of bad economic times.

Trice’s project has won many local supporters, willing to help her where they can. Among them are the Wallowa County Board of Commissioners, the city of Wallowa, the Lower Valley Economic Development Group, Mary Ann Burrows and the Wallowa History Center, history buff Marilyn Hulse, Friends of the Joseph Branch, Northeast Oregon Economic Development District and the Friends of the Wallowa County Museum, for which Trice has been recording oral histories.

Smart Solutions of Bend is creating a professional Web site for the project, and Forest Capital, which owns the site on which Maxville was located, has designated it for protection as a historic site. Someday Trice would like to get permission to do a “soft historical archeological dig” on the site, and has already interested two college professors in the prospect.