Unearthing the history before the dams

Bob Kibler is part of effort to document the history of southern Grant County

DESERT AIRE — The table in Bob Kibler's home office is overflowing with old photographs.

Those photographs of now-gone homesteaders and one-room schoolhouses in towns from Royal City to Desert Aire tell a story of what things used to be like in the southern part of Grant County, and Kibler is working to make sure future generations have the chance to see them.

"People like to know that little old Mattawa has been around since before the Priest Rapids Dam," Kibler said of the nearby hydropower dam. He has a document showing the first platting of Mattawa decades before the dams came to the area, and dating back to 1909.

The photos and newspaper clippings of southern Grant County have been Kibler's life this past six months, and they have been collected in book and electronic form for future generations. The finished product, a 40-page book and DVD-ROM of this history of the area, will soon be donated to the schools and libraries in Mattawa and Royal City. The project was born of the Mattawa Family History Group, a collection of Mattawa-area residents interested in documenting their own families' histories.

But their work developed into much more than that. Kibler has remarked the group got sidetracked by taking on the history project. "And what we got sidetracked on has been better than what we started with," he said.

Kibler has found that not too many people who came stayed in the Mattawa area until the turn of the 20th century, and once-thriving parts of the area are now deserted. Kibler has gathered photos of East Vantage, and an area called Corfu that he admits is mostly non-existent. now. The book also documents the great flood of 1948.

"I'm impressed with the fact that it does have a history before the dams," he said of the south county's history. "People tried to make a go with different kinds of irrigation that didn't work so good."

Along their journey through the project, Kibler has realized how important it is to have resources like a local history available for people. Photographs in the history project date back to 1905, and Kibler admits he has obtained far more documents than can be contained in the 40-page booklet they are planning. That's where the DVD-ROM comes in. Each book will come with a disk containing gigabytes full of historical documents the group wasn't able to fit into the booklet.

A draft copy of the booklet is now complete, but Kibler continues to tweak and find photographs before he and other group members meet next week to bind the book. They have plans to print off 50 copies for the historians who worked on the project, as well as for area schools and libraries. Mattawa Schools has offered to print the book in exchange for a few copies of their own. Students have produced similar history projects on their own in recent years, and Kibler hopes his group's work will encourage those students to explore their own projects in new and different directions so the history doesn't get lost.

"This stuff is fragile," Kibler said, "it ends up in shoeboxes and grandma's attic and ends up burning." As people and information age, Kibler said, the information starts to go by the wayside. By saving what's left and spreading it around, he feels that information is less likely to get lost.

The project will be complete next week, when the family history group binds the scores of historical documents into the 40-page book. One of those history group members is Judy Miller. Miller said she and Kibler happened to be the only two at a group meeting earlier this year when they first though of the idea to document the area's history. The group then invited some teachers and others into the project, and began work tracking down old photographs and documents.

"I think it's wonderful that we're going to be able to give them a DVD of old photos," Miller said, echoing Kibler's hope that the students will grab onto the project as a way to get started on their own projects of area history.

Miller said Kibler is one who deserves praise and credit for the project, scanning information and burning the DVD-ROMs from his own computer.

When this project is complete, Kibler has plans on a smaller-scale project of the history of Desert Aire. But for now, he has hopes others in southern Grant County become as involved in the area's history as he has since the project was born in February.

"I hope it's worthy of people's expectations," he said, "I hope they like it."