Seeing the sights

QUINCY — The Quincy Valley Historical Society is going on tour.

“We’ve wanted to do this for a number of years,” said Harriet Weber, director of operations for the organization. “It stemmed from way back in the Quincy Centennial in 2007. I was on that committee and we did bus tours that year, aside just from the Farmer-Consumer Day bus tours; we did them throughout the season, and we wanted to revive that. So we worked out a legal arrangement with the City of Quincy so that we could use their little mini bus.”

The tours will cover a wide range of both topics and geography. The first one, an excursion to the Hanford Nuclear Site’s B Reactor on April 14, is already sold out, Weber said, but there’s another on Oct. 21.

On April 29, the tour will be called “Bloomers on the Bench,” and will feature speaker Ron Bockelman, an expert on Pediocactus, also called hedgehog cactus, which grows in the Central Washington shrub-steppe.

The May 7 tour, “Walk into the Past,” will take participants to the Ginkgo Petrified Forest and the Wanapum Heritage Center to learn more about the ancient history of the area. The June 17 tour, called “Ridin’ the Rails,” will be led by local ferroequinologist Dan Bolyard and will include a view of the area not often visible from the road.

“We'll traverse the rail system down to Trinidad and talk about that history,” Weber said. “And then we're gonna go up Moses Coulee and go up on top there, and hopefully end up at Mansfield; they've got a little railroad museum up there. You know, if the railroad hadn't come through, there probably wouldn't be a Quincy.”

“Cruisin’ the Crops” will take place July 8, and will be a chance for tour goers to have a new look at the crops Basin residents often take for granted.

“Cruisin' the Crops is a veteran farmer taking you around and showing you what all the crops that are grown in the Quincy Valley are, telling you about them, and people can ask questions,” Weber said. “So you're really learning a lot about what goes into producing a lot of the food crops that we grow here. And there'll be recipes in that one.”

Local geology will be on display for tours in July and August, looking at the Quincy Valley and Dry Falls. There will also be a tour in September of Milbrandt Vineyards’ bottling plant near George.

Tours are limited to 16 people (12 for Bloomers on the Bench) and the cost varies by the length of the tour, Weber said. The all-day tours include lunch, she added.

The tours also tie in with displays the Quincy Valley Museum will be hosting this year, including a model railroad display portraying Quincy in the early years.

To learn more about Quincy Valley Historical Society bus tours, check out the society’s website at www.qvhsm.org.

Joel Martin can be reached at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com