Cory and I went to the Willamette Heritage Center for our anniversary as we hadn’t been there before and we love a museum. The WHC is the site of several historical buildings including the Thomas Kay Mill and the home of Jason Lee, one of the original missionaries to the Willamette Valley and a central figure to Oregon’s statehood. The WHC is set up where you get a map and a key to guide yourself on a tour through these buildings to see what life was like as white settlers moved into the valley as as the Industrial Age moved in as well. The site is very pretty as it is set on a stream as the mill needed water to power its facilities. In addition to tours, weddings and parties are held there today.
Backstory- In college I took weaving for a semester as a part of my BFA. It was a very difficult class that required a lot of extra time where still we students did not finish all we intended/were instructed to make (I made one small throw blanket and what would have been a placemat had I ever finished the others). We used looms with cotton thread and patterns given to us by our professor while she instructed us on how to set up a loom to weave these patterns. Fast forward to sometime after moving to the Pacific Northwest- I became more familiar with textiles like wool & how well it worked in this climate. Wool repels rain, insulates against the cold, and if taken care of will last for generations as our local vintage sellers can attest to. My days in weaving class really impressed upon me the time and effort that goes into the process, so we went to the Pendleton Mill in Washougal, WA (about half an hour from our house) to tour the mill a couple of years ago. It struck me how with all the advances in technology over the years weaving textiles is still a very hands-on process. People were still setting up these mechanized looms by hand, checking the fabric for flaws, even hand mending them if needed! I love wool for how sustainable it is, how well it holds up, the creativity in patterns weavers achieve, and for being so hands-on. It’s wearable art!
So back to the WHC-While the whole of the museum was interesting and we learned much about the early days in the Willamette Valley, the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill is what had my attention. I wondered how it would differ from the active mill we visited in Washougal. This mill is from 1896 and looks as though the workers are out to lunch with how they have it set up. Thomas Kay’s family owns Pendleton so the WHC has some of their support. We learned about teasels- plants used to comb the wool to fluff it up that have been replaced by combs that have to be replaced less (while teasels were reported to be more gentle on the fibers), saw the stream used to power the machinery while the belts still turned, and felt largely this mill wasn’t much different than the one we toured in Washougal (to be fair they said a lot of the machinery in Washougal was from the 1920s). New technology uses computers to color match dyes instead of dye masters using precise weights and measures, but the overall weaving process is so very similar. All of these years and wool is largely made in the same way, though now we have very few mills left in America. In Oregon and the PNW weaving wool, raising sheep and even teasels are still a part of the landscape around us. When we go to the farmer’s markets on Sauvie Island we see sheep farms and teasels growing wild along the road but now they remind me of the old mills and how they used to be more common in America.
