MAXVILLE — A $20,000 grant from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department will partially fund an archaeological dig at the Maxville townsite north of Wallowa.

Gwen Trice, executive director of the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center in Joseph, said Tuesday, July 9, that the rest of the $44,156 project will mostly be paid for with in-kind work done by an anthropology professor Mark Axel Tveskov from Southern Oregon University in Ashland, who wrote the grant. Joining the professor will be students from SOU, Eastern Oregon University and Whitman College.

“We’ll be bringing student archeologists in to excavate” and see what they can find at Maxville, Trice said. “This’ll be an opportunity for young archaeologists to do some work.”

She said some of the results will be presented at Maxville on Sept. 12. She still isn’t sure how the public will be given access to the townsite. The last time it was opened to the public — during the Maxville centennial in 2023 — visitors were ferried up Promise Road about 13 miles from its junction with Highway 82.

Trice said the professor and students could uncover any number of items when they start digging at Maxville. Already there have been found items from a hotel that once was there, as well as musical instruments and tools.

“It will expand our knowledge of the people, industry and all of the above,” she said.

Maxville was created in 1923 by the Bowman-Hicks Lumber Co. out of Missouri. The company recruited loggers from the deep South. Trice’s father, grandfather and uncles were among the 40-60 Black loggers who made up the multiracial town that for a time was the largest town in Wallowa County at about 400 people.

The Great Depression hit and umber prices tanked, In 1933,  Bowman-Hicks closed the town and the logging operation.  The people left, but the town is not forgotten.

The Maxville townsite was acquired by the museum in 2022 to be developed as an interpretive, educational and communal space. SOU’s Tveskov was the lead author on a nomination that led the National Park Service to place Maxville on the National Register of Historic Places.

Those efforts led the Maxville project to earn a 2024 Oregon Heritage Excellence Award from the State of Oregon. 

The grant will allow students from the SOU Sociology and Anthropology program to gain professional experience in archaeological survey, excavation and analysis through field work that will take place this September, and through laboratory work that will occur over the coming academic school year. The students expect to be at Maxville from Sept. 4-14.

“This project will allow our students to engage in practical work on one of the most significant heritage projects currently underway in the Pacific Northwest,” Tveskov said.

Oregon Heritage, a division of Parks and Rec, awarded 18 grants totaling $299,999 for historic properties and archaeology projects. The Maxville grant is one of 12 grants in the Preserving Oregon category for properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places and for other archaeology projects. Six more grants were awarded in the Diamonds in the Rough category. This grant funds façade enhancements that restore the historic character of the properties.

The façade restoration grants are for the Masonic Lodge building and the Eltrym Theater in Baker City, as well as projects in Independence, Lebanon, The Dalles, Union and Malheur County. 

Funding also is going toward the preservation of 11 other historic properties throughout the state in Antelope, Ashland, Aurora, Baker City, Clackamas County, Jackson County, Linn County, Medford, Silverton and Weston.

These grants are approved by the State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation, a nine-member group that reviews nominations to the National Register of Historic Places. The members are professionally recognized in the fields of history, architecture, archaeology and other related disciplines.

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