By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

On Aug. 3, 1999, Bill and Ellen Lilja, Sam Lanahan and Charlie Bottomly shouldered an 18-foot by 20-foot hand-painted vaudeville theater backdrop that had been stored in the Flinn Block and carried it to its new home at the Albany Regional Museum.

The hope was that the backdrop, thought to have been painted in oil during the 1920s for the forerunner of the Venetian Theater, could become part of a vaudeville exhibit…

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

Photo Courtesy: Kay Burt, Museum Volunteer

Stands of majestic Oregon white oak trees that once dominated the mid-valley before settlers arrived have disappeared for the most part, but one tree of significance remains…

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

How many times have we wanted to ask a relative or a friend about something we just learned but we couldn’t because they had passed on?

That’s what happened to me when I found out that my grandfather, C.E. Ingalls, publisher of the Corvallis Gazette-Times from the 1910s until 1950, had donated to Horner Museum, now known as the Benton County Historical Museum, a stirrup lost by Army Lt. Phil Sheridan in the 1850s while he was posted to Fort Hoskins, about 20 miles west of Corvallis.

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

Nearly 31 years ago at 7:47 p.m. on Oct. 29, 1989, then Albany Democrat-Herald reporter Marilyn Montgomery Smith and her husband Stan, chief photographer for the paper, were home watching television when the telephone rang.

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

The late John Miles of Lebanon couldn’t locate the grave of the mid-19th century minister that founded the long-gone town of Union Point so he made it his mission to find the graves of other pioneers who crossed the Oregon Trail, settling in Linn County on original donation land claims.

It is estimated that about 1,200 families “proved up” on land claims in the county by the end of 1855.

Miles’ goal was to record as many graves as possible before the settlers’ names were lost to history.

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

First there was the empty land. Then there were the people and buildings that became part of that land. Then in difficult times, the land reverted back to emptiness.

Those evolutionary changes began primarily in the 1830s, when settlers moved west to the Oregon Country and in the 1840s when they headed south to Linn and Benton counties, all the time looking for new life opportunities. The arrivals staked out land claims near each other and then they built town sites.

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

Photo courtesy Amy Bozorth

So who wants to go to work every day in a tall building, where there are stairs to climb, the temperature can be as low as 60 degrees, the humidity is about 35 percent, and the lights on one floor are mostly off.

Well if you are the executive director or the collections and exhibits manager at the Albany Regional Museum you do. Keith Lohse and Amy Bozorth both love history, and they believe it is important to preserve historical objects…

By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member

Photo courtesy Kay Burt, Museum volunteer

Workers replacing rotten floor joists in the former Pizza King restaurant on Lyon Street have discovered several items from yesteryear, and they have no idea how they ended up in the structure’s crawl spaces.

Since a renovation began in July, they’ve found car parts, two 1920 license plates, a hatpin, a lantern, a lard can, a blue Mason jar, and two pair of shoes, among other things…