By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

Photo courtesy Kay Burt, Museum volunteer

When life handed a young Albany mom lemons, it wasn’t practical to open a lemonade stand that wouldn’t pay the bills so a better financial option was to create an Airbnb downtown.

And that’s just what Ashlee Graybeal, 33, is doing at 206½ Second Ave. S.W., which is above Margin Coffee, the site of the former Stetter’s Cash Store that opened in 1909…

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

Starting in Albany during the late 1860s, a group of men banded together, choosing to set themselves apart from others in the community by wearing special badges, donning ceremonial belts and carrying ornate, metal speaking horns.

They had to be voted into the association and then pay a $2 joining fee. Sounds like a fraternal organization doesn’t it. Well partly.

Members were the resident volunteers that served in the city’s early firefighting companies…

By Peggy Kowal, an Albany resident and Albany Regional Museum volunteer. 

The American Legion has been a part of the patriotic fabric of our states and communities for 100 years.  To commemorate this organization, and to honor Albany’s Post 10, the Albany Regional Museum will open an exhibit in August at 136 Lyon Street S. in historic downtown Albany.

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

Back in their day, Albany residents Dr. Frank Beauchamp, John Cusick, Wallace Howe Lee, Woodson Pierce Jenks, Frank George Merrill, Judge Victor Olliver, Nimrod Price, Francis Mylon Redfield and Ianthe Smith were household names. Not so much anymore.

Docents will bring their stories to life during the free, 13th annual Headstone Tour from 7 p.m. to dusk on Wednesday, July 24, at the Albany Masonic Cemetery at Seventh and Broadway streets.

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

Photography enthusiast the late Robert “Bob” Potts of Albany took photos and collected them mostly of his home town and now 7,000 of his prints have been numbered, sorted and scanned and posted on the Albany Regional Museum’s website.

The historical images can be viewed…

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

It was April of 1964 when the Red Crown flouring mill on the Willamette River in Albany burned, but that doesn’t mean people can’t see what the mill looked like but only a smaller version.

That’s because in the mid-2000s, then 17-year-old Boy Scout Don Gillham of Jefferson along with friends and other Scouts, built a 44- by 50-inch by 30-inch tall replica of the mill, which is on display at the Albany Regional Museum.

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

This year, the Albany Municipal Airport marks its 99th year, making it the oldest continuously operating airfield in the state.

Along with that designation, in June 1998, the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., notified the city that the airport east of Albany had been selected for the National Register of Historic Places….

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

If you want to know more about why a house at Fifth and Walnut streets in Albany was built in an octagonal shape then visit the Albany Regional Museum, where the history of that house along with nine other Victorian-era residences are on display in a new exhibit.

The story of the houses, photographs of the homes and a photo of the homeowners (always a man) are in frames in the museum’s community room.