Digging Into Movie Magic Enthusiastic Young Archeologists Sift Through A 1920s Film Location In Search Of Treasures From Another Era
Dozens of archeologists and junior-archeologists dug delicately through decades of dirt at Minnehaha Park on Friday, looking for relics from the days of silent movies.
Sixth-grade students from Cooper Elementary School ignored rain, clammy soil and occasional worms.
“Look, a piece of glass!” called out a triumphant young archeologist.
“I found some barbed wire,” said another.
“I have a piece of painted pottery,” exclaimed yet another student.
They combed slowly through dirt in what’s thought to be an old beaver pond at Minnehaha Park, guided by professional archeologists, professors and archeology students from Eastern Washington University.
The students worked in the shadow of an old film studio, where 70 years ago stars of the silent screen - including Tyrone Power, Sr. and Nell Shipman - made motion pictures.
Jerry Bryant, an archeologist with the Bureau of Land Management, smiled as he watched the enthusiastic youngsters.
It was working out just the way he’d hoped.
Bryant became fascinated by the park in northeast Spokane, near Hillyard, while walking there with his beagle-pug less than a year ago.
He began researching and realized the neglected nook used by the city to store everything from park benches to pilings from Expo ‘74 offers an interesting glimpse into Spokane’s past.
He also saw the deterioration and destruction.
He’s working to have the park listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He is also educating children and neighbors about protecting the park’s historic value.
“To give the kids ownership in this is the best thing I can do for the park,” Bryant said.
Artifacts uncovered at the site will be given to the Spokane Historic Preservation Office.
“If someone takes something from this park and puts it on a mantel in their home, that piece of information will be missing, and the story here won’t be told,” he explained to the students.
“This is your history, your background, your neighborhood; protect it,” he said.
Saturday, Bryant led nearly 100 neighbors and history fans around the site and through the old studio.
In the evening, a crowd gathered at Cooper Elementary School to watch Nell Shipman’s silent film “The Grub Stake,” complete with a piano player to set the mood.
In the audience were three men in their 70s, Don, Doug and Elwood Amsbury, who lived at the park for 25 years when their dad was groundskeeper.
“We moved in right after Nell Shipman moved out,” said Don Amsbury, 77. “There used to be an overhead walkway from the building we lived in to the dance hall. We never had to go outside.”
Through research, Bryant discovered the park has a rich history, dating back to days when Spokane Indians scoured the area for camas root.
In 1887, lawyer Edgar J. Webster bought 1,700 acres on the north side of the Spokane River and built a resort called Village Webster, naming the grounds around his new house Minnehaha, the Sioux word for waterfalls.
The village included a tennis court and a dance pavilion. Natural springs abound at the park. Webster promoted his place as Minnehaha Springs and Health Resort.
In 1891 the Ross Park Electric Railroad was extended to Minnehaha.
The resort was popular for a while, then failed. Over the next few years it was reincarnated as a brewery, bowling alley, brothel and dance hall before eventually being sold to the city as parkland for $35,000.
The land was ignored for the next few years until 1917 when the leading man of silent film, Tyrone Power Sr., arrived with a plan to found a movie studio.
Power rounded up investors, built his studio around the old dance pavilion and began filming “Fools Gold” at the park in 1918.
But just months into filming at the Minnehaha studio, Power suddenly claimed he was having a nervous breakdown and left the film, according to newspaper reports.
The studio was taken over by actor Wellington Playter who produced films and opened an acting and drama school.
In 1922, word was out that well-known star and director Nell Shipman was looking for a new studio and decided on Minnehaha Park.
Shipman has been described as free-spirited, pioneering and a feminist. In her films, she portrayed the rugged new woman of outdoor adventure, often having to protect a weak and ailing husband.
She was also an early-day animal-rights advocate and arrived at Minnehaha studio with an entourage of animals.
Part of her collection included beavers that were kept in a specially-built pond at the park.
The sixth-grade archeologists searched the old beaver pond last week, combing on hands and knees through two small sections marked off with strings and stakes.
They used small trowels and dustpans, shaving off an inch of soil a at time.
“I don’t want to leave; I love digging in dirt,” said A.J. Nunn, 11, searching for a hint of the past.
Buckets of dirt were poured into sieves and gently shaken by students so the dirt fell out and rocks and relics remained.
Before noon, students turned up artifacts from the 1970s - a brown beer bottle bottom, a pull tab from an old can, a bicentennial quarter, a marble, and a shard of painted pottery.
They were thrilled.
They also found “clinkers,” pieces of unburned coal.
“This is important,” Bryant told them. “It might show they burned coal rather than oil for heat here.”
Peggy Elder, 69, stopped by to watch the students search. She remembers playing with Ilene Amsbury, who lived in a house near the studio in the 1930s. The house foundation is still faintly visible.
“I had a great imagination, and this seemed like a castle to me,” she said. “It was so wild and free and so lovely,” she said.
As interest in the park history spreads, North Side residents are giving Bryant more pieces to the puzzle, helping him put together a picture of its past.
Bryant stood for a moment in the center of the park Friday and looked around at the children working in the drizzle, their imaginations burning.
“I’m just tickled,” he said.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (1 Color)