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CapitalPress.com
April 14, 2017
Archivist collects hop and brewing history
By GAIL OBERST
For the Capital Press
Tiah Edmunson-Morton’s
great-great-grandfather, Henry
Lawrence “H.L.” Edmunson,
grew hops in the late 1800s
on a small farm in the Gosh-
en area south of Eugene. Al-
though the family sold the land
in the 1940s, the plant is still a
large part of Tiah’s life.
“I like to think I have a bit
of hop DNA, since I did end
up starting the first hops/brew-
ing archive in the nation,” she
said of her work at the Oregon
Hops and Brewing Archives,
housed at Oregon State Uni-
versity’s Valley Library.
The archives are a logical
extension of OSU’s role in hop
bition, to the development of
the plant itself, creating variet-
ies resistant to mold, lice and
mildew. Modern research is
producing new varieties that
center on flavors and smells to
be used in craft beers.
In 2013, inspired by the re-
gional focus on beer, Tiah be-
gan gathering stories and ma-
terials connected to Oregon’s
long history in hop cultivation,
as well as home and com-
mercial brewing history. The
Gail Oberst/For the Capital Press archive expanded in 2016 to
Tiah Edmunson-Morton, Oregon State University’s hop and brewing include cider, mead and barley.
The majority of commer-
archivist, listens to hop stories recorded for a recent historic display
cial hops grown in the U.S.
at the university’s library.
today are grown in Oregon and
history in the Northwest. The control the “hop louse,” mov- Washington. An interesting
land-grant college in the 1890s ing to studies of processing history of hops’ commercial
began studying remedies to machinery and, after Prohi- migration from the East Coast
to the West is at Tiah’s blog,
http://thebrewstorian.tumblr.
com.
Collecting and archiving
the remnants of farming his-
tory in boxes and files is “not
very sexy,” Tiah said. “But it’s
important that I save it so peo-
ple can use it.”
The archives are lodged at
OSU, but Tiah often shares
portions of the archives with
the public by talking to com-
munity groups, creating dis-
plays and using social media.
Because she spends her
days collecting it, Tiah is a ver-
itable storehouse of hop histo-
ry, excitedly chatting about
everything from the crop’s first
shipping records in the 1820s
found at Fort Vancouver, to
more recent acquisitions do-
nated by multi-generational
hop-growing families.
Oregon’s hop history is ex-
tensive, she said, and has in-
cluded commercial producers
that numbered nearly 1,000
in the 1880s. They were hand-
picked until the 1930s. Hop
harvests filled the small towns
with hand-pickers each sum-
mer and fall.
“It impacted everything,”
she said, referring to Inde-
pendence, a small town out-
side Salem that claims on its
website that its population
increased more than 10-fold
during picking season, attract-
ing pickers throughout the
region, and migrant workers
from across the nation.
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