The Hilscher's walked through the door with this trunk and when they opened it
there were all these documents their grandfather and grandmother
had written. And the gold pan that their grandfather had been handling
and, you know, panning for gold with.
So that is is what makes it a valuable collection. It helps
extend our knowledge of the Klondike Gold Rush and Seattle's role
in that gold rush. But it also gives you that tangible connection to an
actual person
The Klondike Gold Rush started
in 1896 technically is when the gold was found
by George Carmack and a group other people
The Portland steamer came down and on July 17, 1897
I believe it was
and docked in Seattle with
two tons of gold and it sort of started this
huge uproar across the country and Seattle in general
tried to make itself the number one place
to stop to go to Canada. Because before you went to Canada you needed to have enough
food and supplies to survive those winters.
John F Hilscher was a man who decided to go to the Klondike
to use see if you can strike it rich and spent quite a bit of time up there.
He mined a little bit and eventually started
some business ventures. The Hilscher collection is considered
a very valuable collection for the park's history.
So they were very excited when it walked through the door and they opened
this trunk and here are all
these rolled up documents and a gold pan
that we can associate with somebody. For conservation it implies more active role
possibly with repair or
definitely addressing some of the needs in the special handling needs of a
piece. So facilitating repair for this particular object
which has a large a fairly large tear,
We might consider doing a tracing of the actual
of the actual tear
and then by scoring it...
Okay so we end up with a small repair that mirrors the actual
tear and then that can be adhered to the verso of the piece
And applying the principle of reversibility so that
anything that's done can be undone easily and also,
well it has to be strong enough to hold up to a few
years of handling. We really are
preserving a resource of the park. We consider as curators
the papers that we receive the objects that we receive
a resource for the management of the Park. So to us it is the same as
the animals that are roaming around the parks or the plants that are growing
in the park.
The cultural collections, the museum collections, are a resource