Baker Heritage Museum/Chinese Cemetery Homeschool Field Trip

 I had the pleasure of coordinating a field trip to the Baker Heritage Museum. We've had one field trip a week for the last three weeks! Trying to get it all in before the weather turns bad. It has been so fun. I think field trips are the best way to learn. This is a picture of most of us hangin' out by a big granite boulder in front of the museum.

Before this was a museum, it used to house an indoor Olympic sized pool that was fed and partially heated by a natural hot spring. During WWII, the building was used as a factory supporting the war effort and the pool was filled in. When the war was done, the building was abandoned. The wooden wagon in front of the stage coach was once a horse drawn "school bus". 

This is a mobile dentist's chair. It would travel around with it's owner to serve minors and loggers in their camps.

Here is the youngest member of our expedition, little Boaz, and my sweet friend, Dorene. Loved getting to hold him during the field trip. I got to hold him until Hailey managed to slip somehow and cut her lip on a glass display case. It bled a lot, but she was fine. 

My favorite part of the museum is the amazing rock collection that was donated by two sisters who were rock hounds of yesteryear. There were 4 rooms of rocks, minerals and fossils. This room is full of rocks made up of florescent minerals that glow under black lights. It is seriously cool!   

The myth of the Blue Bucket Mine is what started the gold rush in Baker County. Here is a recreation of the "scene".

After going to the museum and having a delightful picnic in the park next door, I decided to take my tour guides advice and find the Chinese Immigrant Cemetery. So glad I did! This kind of stuff seriously floats my boat. I found the cemetery where 67 Chinese immigrants were buried at one time. All but one grave had been exhumed, the bones purified and sent back to China for final burial. I would love to know why there is only one grave left. I wonder if they couldn't find his family? Very interesting stuff.

There were so many depressions among the sagebrush where the bodies had been exhumed. There were paths you could walk all around them.

The little rock house is a prayer house. There were four Hershey's kisses sitting on the window ledge. Hopefully you can read the sign.

I have many more pictures, but tried to keep it to the best ones. 

God Bless,

Jackie