4A ❚ WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2020 ❚ APPEAL TRIBUNE
Volunteers work at the Jason Lee archaeological site on Broadway Street NE in Salem.
SCOTT PIKE / WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY
Archaeologists learn more
about Jason Lee site
Volunteers logged hundreds of hours, excavated
artifacts from basement area of original structure
Forward This
Capi Lynn
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Imagine walking along the sidewalk
of Broadway Street NE and seeing an
outline of brick marking the location of
the Jason Lee House, or maybe an
etched glass panel that provides a
three-dimensional view of what the his-
toric Methodist mission home would
have looked like when it was built there
in 1841.
Both are among ideas for future in-
terpretative plans at the site, where a
volunteer-led archaeological dig uncov-
ered 2,300-some artifacts, and still
counting.
Such novel displays could be months,
even years, from being realized, but they
were inspired by a recent two-week pro-
ject on the outskirts of downtown Sa-
lem.
Twenty-five volunteers logged 621
hours excavating a swath of parking lot
next to a corner property that will be de-
veloped this summer as a mixed-use
building. They did it COVID-19 style,
wearing masks and maintaining at least
6 feet social distancing, with no more
than 15 people allowed on the site at a
time.
Not even a pandemic could deter
work on what is considered one of the
most significant archaeological sites in
the history of Salem and arguably the
state.
The house was completed in 1841,
and Lee was a prominent figure in early
meetings that led to the formation of
Oregon’s territorial government two
years later. He is recognized as the foun-
der of Salem and a founding member of
Willamette University.
Both the city and the university were
involved in the project, along with Wil-
lamette Heritage Center, the State His-
toric Preservation Office, the Confeder-
ated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Ore-
gon Archaeological Society.
“I’m just so amazed and impressed
with how the community came together
and made this happen during a difficult
time,” said Kimberli Fitzgerald, the
city’s historic preservation officer and
archaeologist. “It just shows how pas-
sionate people are and how much they
care about Salem’s history.”
What made this public archaeologi-
cal project so unique — more so than re-
cent digs at the new police facility prop-
erty and Pioneer Cemetery — is that for
the first time the city worked with pri-
vate property owners.
Fitzgerald said it demonstrated how
support can be provided to property
owners if needed and how owning his-
toric property doesn’t preclude redevel-
opment.
Owners have local roots
Luke Glaze and Charles Weathers are
both graduates of McNary High School,
in their 30s and actively developing
commercial property in and around the
community where they grew up.
Weathers remembers learning about
the Jason Lee House during field trips to
Willamette Heritage as a youngster —
it’s the oldest wood-frame structure still
standing in the Pacific Northwest — but
he had no idea where it originated.
Glaze bought the property at 960
Broadway about two years ago. He’s
aware of the large wooden historic
marker near Mill Creek just to the south.
But he had no idea the Jason Lee House
was built where the parking lot for his
building is today.
He vaguely knew the story of the
house being saved from demolition in
the 1960s and eventually moved to the
Willamette Heritage property.
“I figured any excavation would have
been done when they moved the house,”
Glaze said during a visit at the site a few
weeks before the pandemic.
He and Weathers are partners on a
planned mixed-use building just north
of the parking lot and archaeological
site. They were thankful for support
from the city, which paid for excavation
and will repair the parking lot, and ex-
cited about the dig.
“When they find something,” Weath-
ers said, “Jason Lee’s trash is the city’s
treasure should be the headline.”
As the property owners, they own the
artifacts.
The West facade of the Jason Lee house in 1937. BEN MAXWELL COLLECTION
man.
Before the project launched there
was some question whether anyone had
been buried on site early in the history
of the house, but they found no evi-
dence.
Bones found included deer and elk,
providing insight into the type of food
the early missionaries might have eat-
en.
Searching for the privy
Using historic Sanborn fire insurance
maps and state-of-the-art ground-pen-
etrating radar, volunteers strategically
pinpointed where to excavate.
Lee was among the first white set-
tlers in Oregon, arriving in the fall of
1834. He established a Methodist mis-
sion about 12 miles north of Salem,
eventually relocating the mission to less
swampy land.
Statesman Journal archives describe
Lee’s second mission home as having
been built in the middle of an oak grove
near Mill Creek, just north of where mis-
sionaries set up a water-powered com-
bination lumber and grist mill.
The timbers used to build the house
came from the nearby sawmill, and a
1922 newspaper article suggests Lee
sawed lumber and helped build the
house. He’s been described as a strap-
ping fellow, around 6 feet, 4 inches tall,
strong from working as a youth in
northeastern logging camps.
The two-story structure was built 18
feet by 50 feet with a step-pitched roof
and an extension over the porch that ex-
tends the length of the house on both
levels. It was divided into four apart-
ments for the families of the early mis-
sionaries, including Josiah Parrish and
Lewis Judson.
Multiple additions were made over
the years, and the building later served
as the state’s first treasury, the county’s
first courthouse, Salem’s first post office
and a general store.
Archaeologists volunteering on the
project hoped to locate the privy, or out-
house. In those days, the privy was a
convenient place to toss trash. They had
no such luck, although they did find the
next best thing, the basement of the
original structure.
“One of the things we learned was
that in 1963, at the time they demolished
a majority of the house and prepared the
1841 section for transport, they scraped
the site and pushed debris into that
basement area,” Fitzgerald said.
The primary area of excavation was a
Public curiosity outweighs
pandemic
Rev. Jason Lee STATESMAN JOURNAL FILE
rectangle running east to west and
crossing the basement area, where most
of the artifacts were discovered.
Bottles, beads, bones, oh my!
Fitzgerald continues to tally the
2,300 or so artifacts on a spreadsheet.
They’re separated into categories, in-
cluding artifacts associated with the
building and artifacts associated with
the people who lived there.
Wood, brick, metal, plate glass and
nails were found at the site. The brick,
including what is believed to have been
the wall of the basement, was an excit-
ing find because it confirmed early mis-
sionaries were making brick in the early
1830s.
Household items such as ceramic
and bottle fragments also were found.
Some of the ceramic fragments have
stamps or other markings that will help
date the items. The base of a bottle has
been dated to pre-Civil War, after the
missionaries no longer used the build-
ing.
“I like to imagine the bottle is leftover
from when the basement was used as
storage for a store,” Fitzgerald said.
A couple of Native American beads
the size of a pea or smaller, including
one made of stone or clay, were found
early in the dig.
Volunteers also found hundreds of
small bone fragments — animal, not hu-
The dig drew interest from drive-by
archaeology enthusiasts and curiosity
seekers. Even at the height of the pan-
demic, 10 to 20 people a day would stop
by the site.
Fitzgerald improvised to maintain a
public aspect of the project, putting to-
gether a notebook of historic photo-
graphs and a bag of artifacts, all of
which she shared from a safe distance
while wearing a mask, usually outside a
car window.
What surprised Fitzgerald was that
most people had no idea the house at
Willamette Heritage once stood there.
The hope after this project is that
generations to come will remember not
just where the house stood but the his-
tory beneath it.
Some of the best examples of intact
brick have been preserved, and CB|Two
Architects is working on ideas for reus-
ing them in future interpretative plans
at the site.
Willamette Heritage, where the Ja-
son Lee house is open to the public with
admission to the museum, is likely to
play an education and preservation role.
It just recently re-opened and is oper-
ating with new hours, limited visitors
and social-distancing.
“We hope to create some kind of ex-
hibit, so people can see the materials
and what came out of the ground and
they’re not just stuffed in a closet,” cura-
tor Kylie Pine said. “We’re excited about
what more stories we can tell about the
house.”
Capi Lynn is the Statesman Journal’s
news columnist. Her column taps into
the heart of this community, including
its history. She has spent her entire ca-
reer at this newspaper, 31 years and
counting.