15 Fun Facts About the History Museum and the Great Hall of Washington History

The biggest artifact in the Great Hall of Washington History is the shingle weaving machine. With a giant blade that spun so fast and so dangerously that many sawyers lost fingers, this machine was used to slice cedar logs into thin wedges called "shingles."

Dating back 11,000 years, about the time of the last North American Ice Age, the Clovis points are the museum's oldest artifacts. Made of agate, chalcedony quartz, and mammoth or mastodon bone, the fluted points, bifaces, scrapers, and bone rods are thought to be either hunting tools or ceremonial objects.

The newest artifacts in the Great Hall are the Epidemic Memorial masks. Created in 1995-96 by five Native American artists especially for the museum, the masks represent the effects of smallpox, measles, malaria, and alcoholism on native peoples.

The heaviest artifacts on exhibit are the railroad trucks. Made of heavy iron, these swiveling frames with attached wheels are located at either end of the railroad car. There are two, and they each weigh 6,500 pounds (that's about one hundred 4th graders). Now that's heavy!

Just half an inch in diameter, the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) stick pin, may be the smallest artifact on exhibit in the Great Hall, but it has one of the biggest stories. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, labor unions such as the IWW called for safer working conditions, shorter work days, and fair wages. One of their methods of demand was the general strike which is still used by unions today.

During the 'Rush of 1897-98, people risked life and limb to go in search of a particular precious metal. Can you guess what it is? That's right, gold. You'll find a pair of Gold Pokes used by miners to carry gold dust and a pan of genuine gold nuggets all in the Klondike section of the Wageworker's frontier.

Included in the Hard Times & Homefront section of the Great Hall of Washington History is an acrylic sphere measuring 3.25" in diameter. This small, clear, tennis-ball sized sphere represents the amount of plutonium used in the atomic bomb that exploded over Nagaski, Japan during World War II. The plutonium it represents was manufactured at the Hanford site in Washington.

The Product Tree, with nearly 80 objects representing the wood products industry between 1880 and 1920, is one wild collection of stuff. From wheelbarrows to picket fences, duck decoys to caskets, you'll find just about everything people once commonly made from wood in the tree.

Do you know the difference between a petroglyph and a pictograph? In the museum's Petroglyph Theater, you'll discover that petroglyphs are pictures carved in stone while pictographs are paintings on stone. Both kinds of ancient artwork can be found on the basalt rock walls along the Columbia River.

How many bricks it took to cover the entire museum building? If you guessed 350,000, you're right!

Rising 42 feet into the air (that's 10.5 four-foot fourth graders stacked head-to-toe), the electric tower is the tallest piece of exhibitry in the Great Hall of Washington History. The tower symbolizes the Columbia Basin Project and its role in the production of hydroelectricity and the irrigation of eastern Washington's "desert lands."

That the museum's 200-seat outdoor amphitheater (where all school field trip groups meet on arrival) is modeled after the dome of Union Station (the train station next door) turned upside down.

Everybody, both big and small, young and old, seems to love the Oregon Trail wagon. There's just something about sitting up there on the wagon seat and holding the reins that whisks you back in time...

The 21 touch-screen computers in the Great Hall of Washington History love to be touched. Try your hand at "Logger's Lingo," have a "Conversation with Washington," or quiz yourself with "Encyclopedia Washingtonia." You'll also get to flip through 20 different photo books and face the challenge of ship, fruit label, and salmon puzzles.

"Frozen in time" is how we describe the 35 mannequins within the Great Hall of Washington History. Fashioned after people in Washington's past such as a Nisqually fisherman, Lewis & Clark, and "Rosie the Riveter," the hands and faces of these mannequins were sculptured by a forensic sculptor to best depict the characters they portray. In some cases, modern-day people modeled for the mannequins. In fact, Luigi, the Italian immigrant traveling to Washington via train, bears a strong resemblance to David Nicandri, the museum's director. Hmmm, wonder why....