You know that box of old photos in your closet, the one with all the people you can’t identify and you think you’ll get to someday? The Skagit Valley Historical Archives, held by the Skagit County Historical Museum in La Conner, has 6,500 photos depicting life in the county from an era previously under-represented in the archive that need to be identified.
Mark Iverson, who was a board member and then museum director before his passing in November 2014, had the boxes and boxes of negatives. Each was in its own envelope, some with a name and a date, some blank, some written in hard to decipher handwriting. After a social search, the Skagit Valley Historical Archives learned that each one taken by Bill Forman, a Mount Vernon commercial photographer. Nothing is known about Forman, and how Iverson got them is still a mystery.
Rare Photos Donated to Skagit County Historical Museum
One day in 2014, Mark’s nephew, Matt, walked in the door of the Archive with the trove of photos ranging from the 1920s-60s. It was a hugely important gift but also presented a gigantic challenge. “We were thrilled,” says Jo Wolfe, archives director, “and then overwhelmed. We thought there were about 2000 and that we’d just put them on a shelf and someday – someday – get to them.”
The boxes sat there for years, until 2023 when Wolfe heard about a digitization grant from the Washington Library Association, applied and got it and that allowed her to contract with an intern, Ian Richardson, who scanned and documented the photos, even categorizing them into logical groupings.
There are photos of everything from Skagit County Fair Royalty and car crashes to cows – lots of cows – and a woman wearing a live fox on her shoulder. There was a wedding with four brides, 4-H exhibitions and much more. Some are already on the Skagit County Historical Museum website.
Skagit County History in Photos
“Skagit County is long and skinny and goes from the North Cascades to the Salish Sea”, says Wolfe. “There’s a lot of different geographic, cultural and ethnic diversity, from larger towns to smaller towns to the wild rural areas. It’s wonderful to have it animated through these photos.”
The Skagit County Museum and Archives, founded in 1958, will use this massive collection to help better understand the county’s history. There are over 200,000 artifacts already in the collection – everything from a fabulous spool house model of an original Skagit Valley home to a collection of uranium class that glows under a black light. Old vehicles fill one section, a recreation of a typical general store fills another. There are toys, books, letters and clothes, mostly from pioneer arrivals with the oldest artifact dating from the 1840s. There are also Native treasures that are pre-colonization like stone tools and early baskets.
The Museum and Archives sits on top of the hill in La Conner, on Tribal land. The mission, to preserve and present the diverse history Skagit County, is a critical tool as we interpret the past and how it informs and inspires the present and the future. Open to the public, people search for family history, school groups get to experience history, historians dip in as they research projects and books.
Skagit Valley Historical Archives Needs Help Identifying Photos
“We need help identifying people and places from this large trove of Skagit history,” says Wolfe. And she’s got a creative way to get that help.
The plan is to post groups of the photos on a regular basis – weekly, if possible – and get the public to help identify people and places. And who knows what might happen. You might find your grandparents, a long-lost love, your prize-winning 4-H project or your high school graduating class picture. Maybe someone will have information about Bill Forman, the photographer.
Visit the Skagit County Historical Museum
There’s plenty to see at the Skagit County Historical Museum in the meantime, as we wait for an exhibition of the discovered photos. The permanent displays are wonderful and the view from the terrace overlooking the Valley is spectacular! For more information, visit the Skagit County Historical Museum website.
Skagit County Historical Museum
17508 Moore Rd, Mount Vernon
