Olga Carlson and the AYP

The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (A-Y-P) is considered to be Washington’s first “world’s fair.”  The A-Y-P was mandated by the Washington State Legislature to provide a venue to display the advantages of living in this region.  It brought prosperity and riches to the Pacific Northwest and Washington state had much to be proud.

Nancy Larson and Olga Carlson, undated. (83.99.19)

The A-Y-P was held on the University of Washington campus between June 1 and October 16, 1909,  and hosted nearly 3 million visitors and tourists. Exhibits were presented by foreign nations, western states, and numerous business, scientific, artistic, and social organizations.

Every day at the fair was special!  Olga Carlson came with her family from what is now Happy Valley, Redmond, for Swedish Day.  She kept a diary and the following is her entry for the day:            

“When I was going to Seattle to see the fair, Nancy, Elsie, Helen, and I wanted Grandpa to come with us.  We begged him to go but he just teased us.  We knew he would buy us something nice, at least he went with us to Seattle.

He took us to see a lion which was very big.  He took us for a ride in a boat on the Yukon River which I liked very much.  We went round three times.  Then he took us for a ride on a train, which frighted me very much.  It went up and down all the time and sometimes it would go through a tunnel.  He took us for a ride on a big wheel called a ferris wheel.  It went round three times and when it came to the top it would stop.  I enjoyed riding on it very much.

He brought us ice cream cones and many nice things which we liked very much.  We went to see the University Grounds two times.  First in the day time and then at night.  We heard many people sing.  We saw the parade.  One of my sister’s friends in Seattle was in the parade.  The day we went to Seattle was called the Swedish Day.”

— Olga Carlson's Diary

Chinese Village during a parade, with Ferris wheel to the right, Pay Streak, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 1909. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, AYP600

**Swedish Day was celebrated July 31st and had up to 40,352 admissions.  Festivities began with a parade in Swedish national costumes.

Resources: 

Eastside Heritage Center, Lester Olson Collection 

Alaska-Yukon-Pacific  Exposition : A Timeline History:  Alan Stein, Paula Becker and the HistoryLink Staff, 2009

University of Washington Special Collections

4Culture AYP Curriculum Project 2009

Archaeology Around Japanese American Communities at Barnestown

Edited by David R. Carlson

Around 1898 to 1924 a small town existed in southeastern King County known as Barnestown. This town was created for sawmill and lumber workers recruited to work in the area. Building towns like this allowed workers and their families to live in a community and enjoy some comforts in between hard labor. The needs of workers and their relations is why a store, bathhouse, and school were all built. The buildings have since been taken down by the Kent Lumber Company and the lumber sold, but remnants of Barnestown’s occupants, can still be found today. The material objects left behind are clues about how Japanese Americans there spent their days and the kind of changes and pressures they faced living in a new land.

 Recently, University of Washington PhD student David R. Carlson has conducted archaeological research into the site focusing on Issei (first generation) and Nissei (second generation) Japanese Americans who lived and worked at Barnestown. By first conducting a surface survey and then excavation, Carlson and his team explored what material culture was left behind to tell about the Japanese American laborers lives and some of their experiences around adapting the life in the USA, labor relations, and racial discrimination. From documented histories about our region we know that adjusting to life in the USA was not easy for many immigrant groups, mainly because of the discrimination they often faced. For Japanese American laborers bigotry took the form of pay inequality, legal exclusion from settlement, and even outright violence. By looking at written records and the layout of the town of Barnestown, Carlson was able to create a workplan that could potentially shed light on the day to day experiences of Japanese Americans in sawmill towns like this. Carlson hopes to discover this and more about how the pressures of discrimination affected their daily lives.

Although issues such as adjusting to cultural changes and racial discrimination are not always directly evidenced in excavated material or blatantly obvious in styles of living, research into history creates an understanding of the context which typically guides archaeological research. For example, one of Carlson’s research questions is to figure out the patterns and activities related to alcohol consumption in the community. This requires him to understand what kinds of alcohol were consumed and where, and to contrast the different kinds of alcohol consumed in public versus private areas. These patterns might not seem significant, but with an understanding of existing pressures at the time, these patterns can be given more meaning. Well-documented bigotry was prevalent among many more established immigrants of European descent towards newer Japanese American immigrants. Because of this, influential members of the Japanese American community often discouraged drinking in order to help avoid dangerous situations for their fellow community members. This kind of information, can help archaeologists like Carlson imagine how certain patterns of alcohol consumption—such as a community avoiding high-proof, hard alcohol consumption—can point to larger ideas of socially acceptable alcohol consumption and racial discrimination.

This is just one example of how a more holistic view of history and material evidence can lead to important connections. The above example indicates why this is so important to put material evidence into a larger context. Archeologists rely on the physical materials and chemical evidence discovered during excavation to give clues about the reality of people’s lives in the past. Trained archaeologists have the skills not only to apply a historical context from researching paper records, they also learn to document findings during excavations in a way that tells much more than any one object could. Without this kind of information even the most interesting artifact can become useless in learning about the past. Unfortunately for this particular project, much of the analysis of physical objects had been delayed by the global Covid-19 outbreak, but David R. Carlson shared his preliminary work with us this July, and we look forward to hearing more when he is able to continue his work.

 Special thanks to University of Washington PhD. candidate David R. Carlson (pictured left) for sharing his work with us and providing the information for this article.

David R. Carlson’s research was funded by a UW Department of Anthropology Pilot Study grant and a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (ID # 1743498). It was conducted with the permission and support of Seattle Public Utilities and the Cedar River Watershed Management District. This project further relies on assistance and/or material from the Cedar River Watershed Education Center, the DENSHO Encyclopedia, the Northwest Nikkei Museum, the Hoover Institution Archives, the Seattle Municipal Archives, and the University of Washington Special Collections Library, as well as a large number of incredible and dedicated volunteers! Special thanks to these organizations and Mr. Carlson for bringing this research to the Eastside Heritage Center.