Later this month, a Clark County Stories Project, spearheaded by Washougal School Board member and Washington State University Vancouver history professor Donna Sinclair, in conjunction with Sue Peabody, another WSU Vancouver professor and trustee of the Clark County Historical Museum (CCHM), Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries and CCHM, will begin to explore the issue of “place” and modern-day migration in Clark County.
The oral history workshop, titled, “How We Came to this Place,” will explore the growing gulf of understanding between recent arrivals and those who have deeper historical roots to Clark County. Peabody and Sinclair first recognized this issue when they were looking at local history statistics involving the county’s recent population boom. In the last three decades, Clark County has more than doubled, growing from 221,654 residents to nearly 500,000 residents. More than half of the people currently living in Clark County were born in another state, and about 10 percent were born in another country.
The WSU Vancouver professors found themselves wondering, “How did all these people come to Clark County?” and “How is Clark County changing in response to this growth?”
“The theme – how we came to this place – is both literal and metaphorical,” Sinclair says. “We are looking at stories of migration: how residents and their ancestors arrived here. But we are also interested in exploring together the historical question: how is ‘this place’ the result of historical forces, both local and global?”
In partnering with the Clark County Historical Museum and the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District, the Clark County Stories project aims to inspire and train community members to collect the oral histories (interviews) of residents who have witnessed the changes of the last 30 to 50 years.