12
NOVEMBER 3�10, 2021
CULTURE & HERITAGE
CELEBRATING THE HISTORY
OF EASTERN OREGON
‘The Atlas of Drowned Towns’
Learn more about the project
to document towns lost under
reservoirs at Nov. 9 talk
By Lisa Britton
Go! Magazine
B
AKER CITY — Bob H. Reinhardt is
gathering stories about places that
no longer exist — towns that disappeared
underwater after the construction of large
dams in the 20th century.
He will be in Baker City on Tuesday, Nov.
9, to talk about his public history project
“The Atlas of Drowned Towns,” and specifi -
cally the town of Robinette, a Baker County
town that disappeared with the construc-
tion of Brownlee Reservoir.
His presentation starts at 6 p.m. at the
Baker Heritage Museum, 2480 Grove St.
This is part of the museum’s new lecture
series, which will take place on the second
Tuesday of each month.
Reinhardt is an associate professor in
the Department of History at Boise State
University, where he teaches, researches
and writes about the history of the
American West, environmental history,
public history and the history of public
health. His current history project seeks
to explore the hundreds of communities
in the American West that were displaced
by the construction of dams, mostly in
the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.
Reinhardt is the author of the “The End
of a Global Pox: America and the Eradi-
cation of Smallpox in the Cold War Era”
(University of North Carolina Press) and
“Struggle on the North Santiam: Power
and Community on the Margins of the
American West” (Oregon State Universi-
ty). He served as the executive director of
the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem,
was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship
at Carnegie Mellon University and held
teaching positions at Western Oregon
University and Willamette University. He
is the founder and director of the Working
History Center at Boise State University.
The Baker Heritage Museum is also
working with Reinhardt on the “comunity
workshop” portion of this project.
“The general purpose of the commu-
nity workshop is for us to discuss how
to explore and interpret the histories of
communities displaced or disappeared
by large dams on the Snake River,” said
Gracie Hardy, museum assistant.
She said the museum will also work
with Reinhardt to host a “History Jam-
boree” — an event to collect stories
from community members about towns
displaced by dams, and to work together
to preserve memories and artifacts from
those lost places. These History Jambo-
rees would take place in the spring and
early summer of 2023.
To learn more about Reinhardt’s project,
and to see a map of drowned towns, visit
www.drownedtowns.com.
www.bakerlib.org/photo-archive
The former Baker County town of Robinette was on the western bank of the Snake River 1 mile
below the confl uence of the Powder River. The town’s namesake, James E. Robinette, settled there
in 1887. The railroad and townsite were inundated in 1958 by the waters of Brownlee Reservoir,
which also fl ooded the road that followed the Powder River from Richland to the Snake River.
11am-8pm Tuesday-Saturday